South Korea’s former president Park Guen-hye sentenced to 24 years in prison on corruption charges

Immediate public response reflects deep divisions in country, as hundreds gather outside court supporting once leader, while many praise new head of state for promising reforms

A South Korean court has sentenced former president Park Guen-hye to 24 years in prison after she was found guilty of several corruption charges, abuse of power and coercion.

Park, who was also fined 18bn won (£12m), was not present for Friday’s verdict, having boycotted her trial hearings and previously accused the courts of being biased against her. She has also denied all wrongdoing and has said she will appeal against her sentence.

For the woman who had been president for four years of her five-year term before being ousted more than a year ago, the sentence was the latest tragedy in a life in which her mother was assassinated in 1974 by a bullet intended for her father, the dictator Park Chung-hee, himself shot and killed five years later by his intelligence chief.

Never married, a lonely figure, raised in the hothouse atmosphere of the Blue House, the centre of presidential power, far out of touch with popular sentiment if not reality, Park, 66, faces more years of loneliness before her sentence is due to expire when she reaches the age of 90.

A polarising figure, Park arouses sympathy from largely elderly people waving Korean and also American flags and antipathy from liberals who waged the Candlelight Revolution that led to her impeachment and arrest – and the election 11 months ago of their hero, Moon Jae-in, as president.

The Seoul central district court judge, Kim Se-yun, droned on in a monotone for two hours, reading the charges and arguments before concluding her “wrongdoings” had created “massive chaos to the state affairs … unprecedented in our constitutional history” in which she had “abused her presidential power and abandoned responsibility”.

The immediate response reflected deep divisions in Korean society. Hundreds gathered outside the court before the verdict was read, playing patriotic songs, praying, singing the national anthem and waving the Taegukgi, the South Korean national flag – and US flags too.

They condemned the liberal “left”, hefting banners proclaiming their support for President Donald Trump and the US alliance. One man was seen dragging a coffin with a makeshift corpse of Mr Moon, denounced as a “communist sympathiser” for agreeing to dialogue with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un in pursuit of North-South rapprochement.

“After Park Geun-hye got elected, South Korea’s economy, culture and diplomacy all improved, enough to set a great example for other countries,” said supporter Yoon Il-hye, who described her occupation as “homemaker”. She blamed “the liberal riot” – protests in which hundreds of thousands took to the streets of Seoul in 2016 calling for Park’s downfall – “that oppressed and arrested her”.

Lee Gyu-taek, leader of the minority Korea Patriot Party, addressing the crowd, accused Park’s prosecutors of “committing a fraud” while as president she “did her best to secure the identity of South Korea as a democracy – and her best best for Korea’s economy and its citizens”.

Such views, however, represented one side of the spectrum – opposed by possibly a majority whom polls show applauding Mr Moon for seeking inter-Korean rapprochement while promising reforms curbing the power of the chaebol, or conglomerates that dominate the economy.

Park’s downfall lay in accepting 18bn won (£12m) in outright bribes and coercing donations worth another £51m from huge companies, notably the Samsung empire, for a foundation run by Choi Soon-sil, a woman claiming shamanistic powers, seen as having cast a spell over Park for years. The court, however, saw Park as a more sinister figure than Choi, whom the judge noted had already been sentenced to 20 years for having “used Park’s power and pursued private interest”.

Her long sentence “is the only way for Park to expiate her many wrongdoings,” said a teacher, Jang Sung-hee. “Unfortunately, she doesn’t seem to understand what she was doing in the Blue House. It’s amazing she hasn’t said any apologetic word.” The trial revealed that “what her subordinates were testifying at the hearing were all lies”, said Ms Jang. ”People are still angry. She is completely despised by the public for doing whatever she did.”

If South Korea’s recent history is any guide, however, she will probably be freed long before finishing her term. All Korea’s presidents have been accused of serious crimes after leaving office and two of them, Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, both ex-generals, got heavy sentences for suppressing an uprising in the south-western city of Gwangju in May 1980 in which more than 200 people were killed by army soldiers. Both were eventually pardoned and freed.