I was interested to learn that the South Korean Supreme Court removed President Park Geun-hye from office today.
I expect that her removal from office will be peaceful and that their will be minimal disruption.
I do expect North Korea to unload a barrage or two of rhetoric and about how corrupt South Korea is.
Image: Supporters of President Park Geun-hye of South Korea at a protest near the Constitutional Court on Friday. Her removal from the presidency capped months of turmoil. Credit Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters
South Korea Removes President Park Geun-hye
By CHOE SANG-HUNMARCH 9, 2017
SEOUL, South Korea — A South Korean court ousted the president on Friday, a first in the nation’s history, rattling the delicate balance of relationships across Asia at a particularly tense time.
Her removal capped months of turmoil, as hundreds of thousands of South Koreans took to the streets, week after week, to protest a sprawling corruption scandal that shook the top echelons of business and government.
Park Geun-hye, the nation’s first female president and the daughter of the Cold War military dictator Park Chung-hee, had been an icon of the conservative establishment that joined Washington in pressing for a hard line against North Korea’s nuclear provocations.
Now, her downfall is expected to shift South Korean politics to the opposition, whose leaders want more engagement with North Korea and are wary of a major confrontation in the region. They say they will re-examine the country’s joint strategy on North Korea with the United States and defuse tensions with China, which has sounded alarms about the growing American military footprint in Asia.
Ms. Park’s powers were suspended in December after a legislative impeachment vote, though she continued to live in the presidential Blue House, largely alone and hidden from public view, while awaiting the decision by the Constitutional Court. The house had been her childhood home: She first moved in at the age of 9 and left it nearly two decades later after her mother and father were assassinated in separate episodes."