The women, both in their 60s, have been friends for 40 years. Park has said she only let Choi edit some of her presidential speeches and got her help on вЂњpublic relationsвЂќ issues. Park and Choi deny most of the allegations. Park also is alleged to have passed on state secrets to Choi. Park and Choi are accused of separately receiving a bribe from Samsung and conspiring with top officials to blacklist artists critical of ParkвЂ™s policies to deny them state financial assistance programs, according to prosecutors. Company executives said they felt forced to donate in fear of retaliatory measures, including tax investigations.

Prosecutors believe Park conspired with Choi and a top presidential adviser to bully 16 business groups, including Samsung, to donate 77.4b won ($69m) for the launch of two non-profits that Choi controlled. A bribery conviction alone is punishable by the minimum 10 years in prison and the maximum life imprisonment in South Korea. In the coming weeks, prosecutors are expected to formally charge Park with extortion, bribery and abuse of power. They wept, chanted slogans and tried to block ParkвЂ™s car before being pushed back by police. As she left for the hearing, hundreds of her supporters, many of them elderly citizens, gathered at her private Seoul home.

The Seoul court said it decided to approve ParkвЂ™s arrest because it believes key allegations against her were confirmed and there were worries that she might try to destroy evidence.ДЄ day earlier, Park was questioned at a court hearing for nearly nine hours. But they said they wanted to arrest her because the allegations against her are вЂњgraveвЂќ and because other suspects involved the scandal, including her confidante Choi Soon-sil, have already been arrested. Prosecutors can charge Park without arresting her. Opinion surveys say the liberal opposition leader Moon Jae-in, who lost the 2012 election to Park, is the favorite. South Korea will hold an election in May to choose ParkвЂ™s successor. It made Park the countryвЂ™s first democratically elected leader to be forced from office since democracy came here in the late 1980s. The allegations led South Koreans вЂ“ up to 2.3 million of them вЂ“ to protest in the streets every Saturday for several weeks before lawmakers impeached her in December and the constitutional court ruled in March to formally remove her from office. Prosecutors accuse Park of colluding with a confidante to extort big businesses, take a bribe from one of the companies and commit other wrongdoing. The president must be a South Korean citizen, at least 40 years old, who has lived in South Korea for 5 years.The Seoul courtвЂ™s decision is yet another humiliating fall for Park, South KoreaвЂ™s first female president who was elected in 2012 amid a wave of conservative nostalgia for her late dictator father, whose 18-year rule is marked by both rapid economic rise and enormous human rights abuses. Since 1981, the president has been barred from reelection. It was previously set at four years from 1948 to 1972, six years from 1972 to 1981, and seven years from 1981 to 1988. The presidential term has been set at five years since 1988. Nine people have served twenty-four terms as Heads of State (with varying titles) of the Provisional Government between September 1919 and August 1948. The legitimacy of the Provisional Government has been recognised and succeeded by South Korea in the latter's original Constitution of 1948 and the current Constitution of 1988. Prior to the establishment of the First Republic in 1948, the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea established in Shanghai in September 1919 as the continuation of several governments proclaimed in the aftermath of March 1st Movement earlier that year coordinated Korean people's resistance against Japan during the Japanese occupation of Korea. The president is also the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces. Under the Constitution of South Korea, the president is the country's head of state as well as its head of government. Since the establishment of the Government of the Republic of Korea, commonly known as South Korea, in 1948, twelve people have served nineteen terms as president of South Korea. Bottom right: Moon Jae-in, the incumbent officeholder, has held office since 2017.This was the first peaceful change of regime in South Korean history. Bottom left: Kim Dae-jung was elected during the 1997 presidential election.Top right: Park Chung-hee was the longest-serving President, taking power during the 1961 coup d'etat, sometimes named the Tiger of Yushin Constitution in the 1970s.Top left: Rhee Syng-man became the first President of the Republic of Korea in 1948.

South korea president