Friend of ousted South Korean leader sentenced to 20 years in prison

Choi was arrested and indicted in late 2016 on charges of conspiring with the president to collect or demand $52 million in bribes from large South Korean businesses. Separately, she and Park were accused of coercing businesses into making donations worth $71 million to two foundations that Choi controlled.

In a ruling Tuesday, a three-judge panel at Seoul Central District Court convicted her on all of those charges, although it said that the bribes totaled $21 million, less than prosecutors claimed.

“Her extensive meddling in state affairs created chaos and eventually led to the unprecedented impeachment of the president,” the panel said of Choi in its verdict.

Also Tuesday, Shin Dong-bin, the chairman of Lotte, a hotel chain and shopping mall giant, was sentenced to 2 1/2 years on charges of offering $6.5 million in bribes to Choi and Park, in hopes of winning a license for a lucrative duty-free shop. He was arrested later in the day. In December, Shin was convicted of corruption charges stemming from a different scandal, but his 20-month sentence was suspended.

The scandal surrounding Park and Choi shook the country’s political and business worlds, leading to the conviction of Lee Jae-yong, the de facto head of Samsung, one of the world’s largest technology companies, as well as the impeachment of Park, a first in South Korean history.

Lee was released from prison this month, after an appeals court convicted him on bribery charges but suspended his prison sentence. Many South Koreans saw that decision as the latest example of the judiciary’s soft-glove treatment of tycoons found guilty of serious crimes.

Choi, 61, has known Park since they were young. Her father, Choi Tae-min, a shaman turned Christian pastor who founded an obscure sect called the Church of Eternal Life, befriended Park when her father, the strongman Park Chung-hee, ruled the country during the 1970s.

After Park Chung-hee’s assassination in 1979, Choi became an adviser and friend to Park, who had begun living a life of seclusion. Few South Koreans had heard of Choi until after Park was elected in 2012, but as the corruption scandal grew, rumors spread that Choi was an occult figure who held the president in thrall. Prosecutors never accused her of engaging in occult practices, but they said she manipulated government affairs from behind the scenes and for personal gain.

The scandal began in 2016, when students at a prestigious Seoul university alleged that Choi had used her influence with Park to force the school to admit her daughter, despite a lack of qualifications. (It would later emerge that some of the money Choi secured from South Korean businesses went to finance her daughter’s equestrian career.)

Local news media began digging, and former associates of Choi turned into whistleblowers. Soon, South Korea had its biggest corruption scandal in decades. Huge crowds of demonstrators filled central Seoul every weekend for months on end, and Parliament impeached Park in December 2016. The Constitutional Court formally ousted her last March.

The scandal rekindled long-standing public anger over the extensive ties between government and corporations in South Korea. Park tearfully apologized to the public, cutting ties with Choi and insisting that she was not aware of her activities.

Choi has remained loyal to Park, insisting that both were innocent. Both have also argued that they were victims of a politically motivated investigation. But prosecutors called them criminal conspirators, an argument that the court endorsed Tuesday.

“We are speechless,” Lee Kyung-jae, Choi’s lawyer, said, adding that she would appeal.

Park, who has been in custody since March, is being tried separately on 18 criminal charges, including bribery, coercion and abuse of office. She still has loyal followers, who rally in central Seoul calling for her release. On her 66th birthday this month, they placed a large cake in front of the prison where she is being held.

The ruling Tuesday could have ramifications for the trial of Lee, the Samsung leader. Last August, he was sentenced to five years in prison for offering $6.7 million in bribes to Choi and Park. But the appeals court that freed Lee this month said the bribes had totaled just $3.3 million and accordingly reduced his prison term by half (and suspended the sentence).

The judges handling Choi’s case Tuesday, however, said Lee had indeed paid $6.7 million in bribes. That information is likely to come before the Supreme Court, which now has Lee’s case.

Lee, the vice chairman of Samsung Electronics and the third-generation scion of the family that runs the Samsung conglomerate, has denied the charges against him, saying that Samsung was coerced into contributing to support Choi’s foundations and her daughter.

The New York Times

Friend of ousted South Korean leader sentenced to 20 years in prison

The woman, Choi Soon-sil, was a longtime friend and confidante of Park, whose own trial began in May.

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