South Korea’s Impeachment Process, Explained

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean lawmakers say they will soon try to impeach President Park Geun-hye, who is accused of helping a friend commit extortion. If they force her from office, it will be a first for South Korea, but the process is a long and uncertain one. Here’s what you need to know:

What is Ms. Park accused of?

Prosecutors say Ms. Park conspired with Choi Soon-sil, an old friend, to extort the equivalent of tens of millions of dollars from South Korean businesses. Ms. Park cannot be indicted while in office, but she has been officially identified as a criminal suspect, which had never happened to a president before.

She has also been accused of helping Ms. Choi illegally gain access to confidential government documents. Opposition parties say the combined allegations are serious enough to warrant her removal from power; some members of her own party agree, as do leading South Korean newspapers and most of the public, according to polls. Huge protests have been held in Seoul demanding that Ms. Park step down, but she has refused.

What happens next?

The 300-member National Assembly is expected to vote on an impeachment bill before Dec. 9, when the legislative session ends. If 200 members vote yes, Ms. Park will be impeached.

Is impeachment likely?

It’s quite possible. There are 172 opposition and independent lawmakers who want Ms. Park removed, which means they need 28 of the 128 lawmakers from her conservative Saenuri Party to join them. Several have already said that they will, and some domestic news outlets and members of the party expect 30 to 40 of its lawmakers to break ranks.

Would that be it — the end of the Park presidency?

Not yet. She would be suspended, and the country’s No. 2 official, Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn, would become acting president. But the Constitutional Court would then have to rule on whether her impeachment was justified. It would have 180 days to do so.

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If six members of the nine-judge court support the impeachment, Ms. Park will be formally removed from office. South Korea will have 60 days to elect a successor, with Mr. Hwang carrying out her duties in the meantime. But if fewer than six judges do so, Ms. Park will immediately return to power. (Ms. Park moved this month to replace Mr. Hwang, but the National Assembly has not approved the replacment.)

It’s hard to guess how the court would vote. Six of its judges were appointed by Ms. Park or her conservative predecessor, or are otherwise seen as being close to the Saenuri Party. But plenty of South Korean conservatives think Ms. Park should go.

And there could be another complication: Two of the judges are set to retire by March. If the court has not ruled by then, some legal scholars say, those judges could not be replaced, because the president formally appoints them (and Ms. Park would still be suspended). That would make a ruling in Ms. Park’s favor more likely, because six of the remaining seven judges would have to uphold her impeachment.

And some scholars say that if one of the seven, for any reason, were unable to serve, the court would not be able to rule at all. No one knows what would happen then.

Has a South Korean president ever been impeached before?

Only once — in 2004, when President Roh Moo-hyun was accused of calling on voters to support his party in parliamentary elections. That was said to violate an election law requiring the president to remain neutral. (While Ms. Park’s critics say she is too aloof, Mr. Roh, who died in 2009, was often accused of speaking too freely.)

Mr. Roh was suspended, but the impeachment vote enraged many South Koreans, who demonstrated in large numbers and gave his party a landslide victory at the polls. The Constitutional Court later ruled that Mr. Roh’s impeachment was not merited, saying his breaches of the election law were relatively minor, and he was returned to office.

Who, incidentally, is Choi Soon-sil?

She is the daughter of a cult leader who befriended Ms. Park in the 1970s, when Ms. Park was a young woman and her father, Park Chung-hee, was South Korea’s dictator. Lurid rumors about Ms. Park’s connection to the Choi family have dogged her for years, and many South Koreans have come to believe that Ms. Choi wields a sinister, cultlike influence over the president.

Ms. Choi was arrested this month and charged with extortion and fraud, and prosecutors said they considered Ms. Park an accomplice.

Though Ms. Park cannot be indicted while in office, prosecutors could pursue charges against her after her term ends in February 2018. The Constitution says presidents can serve only one term.

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