Since Syngman Rhee, the first president of South Korea elected in 1948, no less than seven presidents of the island have been indicted by the courts.
There are only Moon Jae-in (2017-2022), Kim Young-sam (1993-1998) and the Nobel Peace Prize winner Kim Dae-jung (1998-2003), architect of a rapprochement with North Korea, to have peacefully exercised and completed their mandates. Although the latter was still sentenced to death for sedition in 1980, under the dictator Chun Doo-hwan, whom he opposed before being authorized to go into exile in the United States.
With these exceptions, almost all South Korean presidents have met a disastrous fate. Until President Yoon Suk Yeol, in power since 2022, was dismissed on Saturday December 14 by the South Korean parliament. Parliament had just sanctioned him for a failed attempt to impose martial law and sent the army to Parliament to muzzle him the previous week.
Rigged elections and coup d'état
The disastrous destiny of South Korean heads of state began with the first of them, Syngman Rhee, elected in 1948. In 1960, he was forced to resign by a popular insurrection led by students, after having attempted to extend his mandate through rigged elections. He then went into exile in Hawaii (United States), where he died five years later, in 1965. Barely months after his departure, his successor, President Yoon Bo-sun, was also overthrown, this time by a coup d'état led by General Park Chung-hee, father of future President Park Geun-hye. The deposed president will be kept in his post temporarily, then replaced in 1962.
But fate persists: General Park Chung, who then exercises power, is killed by a bullet in the head in October 1979 by his main intelligence officer after a banquet, after having escaped, eleven years earlier, to an assassination attempt by a North Korean commando infiltrated in Seoul. Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, then army generals, took advantage of the political confusion that followed to foment a coup d'état in December 1979. Chun Doo-hwan became president in 1980, after obtaining the resignation of new president Choi Kyu-ha.
Sixteen years later, in 1996, Chun Doo-hwan, nicknamed the “Butcher of Gwangju” for having ordered a bloody repression in this southwestern city when he came to power in 1980, was sentenced to death when he already handed over to Roh Tae-woo in 1987. His sentence was subsequently commuted to life in prison. He was finally pardoned in 1998 after only two years behind bars, and died of leukemia in November 2021, a few days after his successor Roh Tae-woo.
Millions of dollars in bribes and sharing of classified documents
Roh Tae-woo, elected after the departure of Chun Doo-Hwan, whom he had helped to come to power, ruled South Korea from 1988 to 1993. In 1996, he was sentenced to 22 years in prison for corruption and treason. . He was also amnestied two years later, before dying, like his predecessor, from leukemia in November 2021 at the age of 88.
After 13 years without drama at the top of the state, a new event shook the country in May 2009: president from 2003 to 2008, Roh Moo-hyun committed suicide by throwing himself from the top of a cliff. He was the target of an investigation into the payment by a wealthy shoe manufacturer of one million dollars to his wife, and five million dollars to the husband of one of his nieces. In March 2004, Parliament adopted an unprecedented impeachment motion that suspended Mr. Roh from office, a procedure invalidated by the Constitutional Court two months later.
South Korea's first female president, Park Geun-hye, was not spared. In power since 2013, she was dismissed on December 9, 2016 by Parliament, then indicted and imprisoned. The one who presented herself as incorruptible is accused of having received tens of millions of dollars from South Korean conglomerates, including Samsung, of having shared classified documents, of having put on a “blacklist” artists critical of his policies, or even for having dismissed officials who opposed his abuse of power. The daughter of ex-dictator Park Chung-hee was definitively sentenced in 2021 to 20 years in prison and heavy fines, before finally being pardoned in December 2021 by her successor Moon Jae-in.
Finally, in October 2018, Lee Myung Bak, in power from 2008 to 2013, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for corruption. He is notably found guilty of having received, again, bribes from Samsung to pardon the president of the conglomerate, Lee Kun-hee, who had been convicted of tax evasion. Before being pardoned, in December 2022, by President Yoon Suk Yeol, who has just fallen.
