Park Geun-hye, South Korea's Ousted President, Gets 24 Years in Prison

Supporters of former President Park Geun-hye continue to insist she is innocent. Ahn Young-Joon/Associated Press

SEOUL, South Korea — Park Geun-hye, South Korea’s impeached and ousted president, was sentenced on Friday to 24 years in prison on a variety of criminal charges, in a case that exposed the entrenched, collusive ties between South Korea’s government and huge conglomerates like Samsung.

Ms. Park’s conviction on bribery, coercion, abuse of power and other charges was the first lower-court ruling on a criminal case to be broadcast live in South Korea. She is the country’s first former leader to be arrested and convicted of crimes since two former military-backed presidents were found guilty of sedition and corruption in the 1990s.

Ms. Park did not appear in court for her case on Friday. She has refused to attend any court hearings since October, staying in her solitary prison cell, complaining of poor health and insisting that she is the victim of a political conspiracy.

Although Ms. Park is expected to appeal her prison term, the sentencing is likely to bring a sense of closure to the corruption scandal that engulfed her. Her supporters, mostly elderly South Koreans, have insisted on her innocence, holding weekend marches in downtown Seoul and shouting for her release.

Following weeks of huge demonstrations calling for her ouster, the National Assembly impeached Ms. Park in December 2016 on charges of bribery and abuse of presidential power. In March of last year, the Constitutional Court upheld the assembly’s decision, making Ms. Park the first South Korean leader to be removed from office through parliamentary impeachment. She was arrested three weeks later.

At the center of the scandal that toppled Ms. Park’s government is the allegation that she and Choi Soon-sil, a longtime friend and confidant, collected or demanded large bribes from three big businesses, including Samsung, the country’s largest family-controlled conglomerate. Separately, the two women were accused of coercing 18 businesses into making donations worth $72 million to two foundations that Ms. Choi controlled.

The same court panel that handled Ms. Park’s case called her and Ms. Choi criminal co-conspirators when it sentenced Ms. Choi to 20 years in prison on Feb. 13 on bribery, extortion and other criminal charges.

Ms. Park has tearfully apologized to the public, cutting ties with Ms. Choi and insisting that she was not aware of many of her friend’s alleged influence-peddling activities. Her lawyers also appealed for leniency, arguing that the money collected from big businesses was not used for her personal gain. Some of the alleged bribes taken from Samsung were used to finance the equestrian pursuits of Ms. Choi’s daughter.

Ms. Park’s removal from office — she was replaced as president by the liberal politician Moon Jae-in — represented a huge setback for her once-dominant conservative party. Locked away in jail, she has since slowly receded from public discourse. Older conservatives who represent her most ardent supporters are deeply mistrustful of Mr. Moon, a progressive whom they regard as pro-North Korean, but who enjoys public approval ratings hovering around 70 percent.

Ms. Park’s scandal rekindled longstanding public anger over the extensive ties between government and the family-run conglomerates known as chaebol. The case also led to the arrest of Lee Jae-yong, the de facto head of Samsung.

Last August, Mr. Lee, the vice chairman of the smartphone-maker Samsung Electronics and the third-generation scion of the family that runs the Samsung conglomerate, was sentenced to five years in prison for offering $6.7 million in bribes to Ms. Choi and Ms. Park. But he was released from prison in February, after an appeals court ruled that the bribes had totaled just $3.3 million, and accordingly reduced his prison term by half and suspended the sentence.

Mr. Moon, in addition to calling for easing tensions and promoting dialogue with North Korea, has also vowed to root out corrupt relationships between politics and business.

Almost all of South Korea’s presidents have seen their reputations tarnished toward the end of their tenure or during their retirement because of corruption scandals involving them, their relatives or aides.

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