Seoul: South Korea’s scandal-hit President Park Geun-Hye on Tuesday said she was willing to resign early and let parliament decide her fate, a move critics said was a bid to delay impending impeachment. Park has been engulfed in allegations of influence peddling and claims that tens of millions of dollars have changed hands, sparking widespread anger across South Korea and bringing hundreds of thousands of protesters onto the streets demanding her ouster.
“I will leave the issue of my departure, including the (possible) reduction of my term in office, to a decision by the National Assembly”, she said in a speech carried live on television. “Once lawmakers come up with measures to transfer power in a way that minimises any power vacuum and chaos in governance, I will step down,” she said. Park’s presidency has gone into a tailspin, with accusations that Choi Soon-Sil — a secretive confidante dubbed “Korea’s Rasputin” — elicited more than $60 million in payments from some of the country’s top firms. Park has been named as a suspect in the investigation, making her the first sitting president to be subject to a criminal probe while in office.
