Kwon Seong-dong, the leader of the People Power Party and former chairman of the National Assembly’s Judiciary Committee who handled the impeachment process during Park Geun-hye’s impeachment, visited the Constitutional Court. He reportedly urged the court to immediately dismiss the impeachment motion following Democratic Party’s Jung Chung-rae’s suggestion to exclude charges of treason and criminal offenses from the impeachment proposal.
Without the charge of treason, Park Geun-hye was, instead, charged for avoiding investigations by Yoon Suk-yeol’s special prosecutor.
However, Kwon Seong-dong, when he was in charge of the impeachment of Park Geun-hye, closely consulted with Constitutional Court Justice Kang Il-won to exclude criminal charges like bribery from the impeachment grounds for their own sake. The Constitutional Court cited this decision, creating a precedent that allowed the continuation of impeachment proceedings even after key crimes were excluded from the impeachment motion. At that time, Park Geun-hye’s legal team, including Kim Pyeong-woo and Jung Gi-seung, argued in official statements that if significant charges were to be removed from the impeachment motion, a re-vote by the National Assembly was necessary. However, Kang Il-won and Kwon Seong-dong ignored these legitimate objections and succeeded in carrying out Park Geun-hye's impeachment.
As a result, the impeachment grounds against Park Geun-hye, without criminal charges like bribery, were filled with vague claims such as the violation of corporate freedoms and a lack of will to uphold the Constitution. In particular, the Constitutional Court cited Park Geun-hye’s avoidance of an investigation by Yoon Suk-yeol’s special prosecutor as evidence of her lack of commitment to constitutional defense. This was a distorted and manipulated judgment, essentially using a “time machine” to cite events that took place during the National Assembly’s impeachment vote and the ongoing Constitutional Court proceedings, not a valid time period for evidence.
Notably, at the time, unlike Yoon Suk-yeol today, Park Geun-hye faced no charges of treason or crimes against foreign relations, giving her, as the sitting president, the right not to be subjected to investigation. If Kwon Seong-dong and Kang Il-won had impeached Park based on those charges, Yoon Suk-yeol, who used military forces to block an arrest warrant issued by the court while facing treason charges, would have no defense if he were impeached tomorrow.
When the arrest warrant for Samsung CEO Lee Jae-yong on charges of bribery was dismissed, Kwon Seong-dong and Kang Il-won excluded bribery charges from the impeachment proceedings.
Kwon Seong-dong’s hypocritical behavior prompted journalists to question him on the matter. In response, Kwon made the absurd and misleading claim that “the impeachment of Park Geun-hye was primarily about state governance irregularities, and bribery charges were peripheral.”
In 2004, during Roh Moo-hyun’s impeachment, the Constitutional Court acknowledged his violations of election law and the Constitution but ruled that the offenses were not severe enough to justify removing him from office. At that time, the court set a precedent indicating that bribery-level crimes would be required to justify the impeachment of a president.
Thus, during Park Geun-hye's impeachment, the determination of whether bribery charges could be substantiated became the central issue. However, the special investigative team failed to cite bribery in its report, as there was no evidence that Park personally received any money–not even a single cent. Contributions made by corporations to foundations were, based on Supreme Court precedents like the Byun Yang-kyun and Shin Jung-ah cases, not considered bribes.
To tackle this challenge, Yoon Suk-yeol was brought in. Yoon reportedly mocked the special investigation team’s inability to link Park to bribery, saying, “Running foundations is basically Park Geun-hye’s job. If we tie foundation donations to bribery charges, Park Geun-hye won’t escape.” This statement, boasting confidence in fabricating a bribery case, was later revealed in an audio recording.
In reality, on December 4th, 2016, when Yoon Suk-yeol was appointed head of the Special Prosecutor’s Fourth Team to investigate bribery allegations involving Park Geun-hye and major conglomerates, Kim Moo-sung likely gained confidence to persuade fellow Saenuri Party (New Frontier Party) lawmakers. He might have reassured them with statements like, “Yoon Suk-yeol, the master of fabricated investigations, will ensure Park Geun-hye is charged with bribery, so don’t hesitate to support the impeachment.” This confidence led to over 60 Saenuri Party lawmakers voting in favor of impeachment, far exceeding the 20 votes that Representative Park Jie-won initially requested. Their trust in Yoon’s ability to build a bribery case was the driving force behind this shift.
However, even with Yoon Suk-yeol and Han Dong-hoon leading the investigation, they faced a significant obstacle: there was no evidence that Park Geun-hye personally received even a single penny. Without fabricating bank records, there was no way to implicate her. Furthermore, conglomerate leaders like Lee Jae-yong (Samsung) and Shin Dong-bin (Lotte) consistently testified that Park never directly requested donations for the foundations.
On January 19th, 2017, a turning point occurred when the court dismissed the arrest warrant for Samsung’s Lee Jae-yong on charges of bribery. This dismissal sparked widespread skepticism about the viability of a bribery charge against Park Geun-hye. In response, Kang Il-won and Kwon Seong-dong conspired to draft a completely new impeachment motion on February 1st, excluding bribery and other criminal charges. While the original impeachment motion, endorsed by over 200 lawmakers, spanned 40 pages, the new and allegedly unlawful impeachment motion they prepared expanded to 70 pages.
Roughly a month later, Park Geun-hye was impeached based on entirely new accusations not included in the National Assembly’s original impeachment motion, such as violating corporate freedom and obstructing the special prosecutor’s investigation. Having completed this mission, Kang Il-won and Kwon Seong-dong advanced their careers under the Yoon Suk-yeol administration.
Do Park Dae-chul, Kim Jin-tae, Seok Dong-hyun, and Chae Myung-seong believe Kwon Seong-dong’s statement that “the bribery charge was a minor issue in Park Geun-hye’s impeachment”?
Today, as Kwon Seong-dong was telling blatant lies in front of the reporters at the Constitutional Court, Park Dae-chul, who had joined the protests against Park Geun-hye’s impeachment eight winters ago saying, “How can you impeach Park Geun-hye for bribery when she hasn’t even received a single cent?” stood there. MediaWatch CEO Byun Hee-jae asked Park Dae-chul, “Do you really believe, as Kwon Seong-dong says, that Park Geun-hye’s bribery charge was just a minor reason for her impeachment?” Both Park Dae-chul and Byun Hee-jae, as well as Kim Jin-tae–the Governor of Gangwon Province–and Jo Won-jin–the leader of the Our Republican Party–have all called for the acquittal of Park Geun-hye on the bribery charge and the invalidation of the impeachment.
Likewise, Seok Dong-hyun, a lawyer who worked with Byun Hee-jae on the movement for the invalidation of Park Geun-hye’s impeachment, and Chae Myung-seong, who served as Park Geun-hye’s lawyer–now appointed as the legal secretary under the Yoon Seok-youl administration–know better than anyone that the bribery charge was a central issue in Park Geun-hye’s impeachment. In particular, Chae Myung-seong has even published a book strongly criticizing how Kwon Seong-dong and Kang Il-won illegally removed the bribery charge and created a new impeachment motion.
The crisis in South Korea caused by the impeachment of Park Geun-hye stemmed from the widespread perception that, in order to achieve political goals, the procedures could be easily trampled upon. This led to the rise of figures like Yoon Seok-youl and Han Dong-hoon, experts in fabricated investigations, who, with the fervent support of conservatives hoping to imprison Moon Jae-in and Lee Jae-myung, seized power.
Before even taking office, Yoon Seok-youl, known for his manipulation and distortion in the investigation into Park Geun-hye, was a key figure in initiating the movement calling for her ousting. However, even the master of manipulation, Yoon Seok-youl, believes that democratic principles must be upheld in the impeachment process, insisting that due procedures must be followed to prevent the emergence of future figures like himself or Han Dong-hoon, and to dismantle the foundation of falsehoods and manipulation.
In this regard, if the incorrect procedures followed in Park Geun-hye’s impeachment are repeated, the Democratic Party under Lee Jae-myung will inevitably become an enemy of democracy. However, to judge this party, the first priority must be to hold accountable figures like Kwon Seong-dong, who colluded with the Constitutional Court to push through the illegal impeachment motion against Park Geun-hye.
If Kwon Seong-dong is not judged, the Democratic Party will simply argue, “We are merely following the precedent set by Kwon Seong-dong’s Constitutional Court ruling,” and the current Constitutional Court will continue to follow that same precedent, spiraling down the neverending hole of corruption.
