The East Asian country of South Korea held its presidential elections in 2012 on 19 December. Since democratisation and the establishment of the Sixth Republic, they were the sixth presidential elections held in the country. The elections were held under the first-past-the-post system, in which there was a single round of voting and the candidate receiving the highest number of votes was elected.
Lee Myung-bak, who was earlier the CEO of Hyundai Engineering and Construction, and the mayor of Seoul from 2002 to 2006, occupied the President's office from 2008 to 2013. Lee Myung-bak's tenure as the President of South Korea ended on 24 February 2013.
Before the end of his tenure, fresh presidential polls were necessitated. 30.7 million people voted with turnout at 75.8% in the 2012 presidential polls of South Korea. Park Geun-hye of the Saenuri party was elected the South Korean president with 51.6% of the vote opposed to 48.0% for her opponent Moon Jae-in. She not only became the first President in the history of the country, but her share of the vote was also the highest won by any candidate since the beginning of free and fair direct elections in 1987 and the first such election in which any candidate won a majority.
Who is Park Geun-hye?
Park was not only the first female president of South Korea, but also the first female president popularly elected as head of state in East Asia.
Park, from 2004 to 2006, was leader of the conservative Grand National Party (GNP). She was also a leader of the Liberty Korea Party from 2011 to 2012.
Before her presidency, Park was a member of the National Assembly, serving four consecutive parliamentary terms between 1998 and 2012.
Fall from grace
The National Assembly of Korea impeached Park on 9 December 2016 on charges related to influence peddling by her top aide, Choi Soon-sil. Then-Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn assumed her powers and duties as acting president as a result. Her impeachment was upheld by the Constitutional Court by a unanimous 8–0 ruling on 10 March 2017, thereby removing Park from office, making her the first Korean president to be so removed. On 6 April 2018, South Korean courts sentenced her to 24 years in prison (later increased to 25 years) for corruption and abuse of power. Two separate criminal cases resulted in an increase of seven years in Park's prison sentence in 2018. She was found guilty of illegally taking off-the-book funds from the National Intelligence Service (NIS) and given a five-year prison sentence, and also found guilty of illegally interfering in the Saenuri Party primaries in the 2016 South Korean legislative election, for which she was sentenced to two more years in prison.
Pardon on compassionate grounds
It was announced on 24 December 2021 that Park would receive a pardon on compassionate grounds from South Korean President Moon Jae-In. The former President was released from prison on 31 December last year, and returned home three months later on 24 March 2022.
