Do we like Park Geun-hye?
Our score: 2 out of 10. A Supreme Court-upheld 20-year corruption sentence and a continued denial of wrongdoing, with little documented good beyond being the country's first woman president.
Park Geun-hye was born in Daegu in 1952, the first child of Park Chung Hee, the army officer who seized power in 1961. When her mother was killed in 1974 she became her father's acting first lady at 22, then left the Blue House after her father was assassinated in 1979. She came back through the National Assembly in 1998, won the 2012 election and became South Korea's first female president.
The fall was spectacular. Reports alleged that she and her confidante Choi Soon-sil colluded to pressure big businesses into paying money to foundations Choi controlled. Park apologised but denied wrongdoing. Parliament impeached her in December 2016 and the Constitutional Court unanimously removed her in March 2017. She was later convicted of corruption and abuse of power, including bribery, and pleaded not guilty throughout. In January 2021 the Supreme Court upheld a 20-year term, on top of a separate two-year sentence from 2018.
On the harm test, we found nothing from her own mouth against LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the planet, and nothing on her record on those topics either way, so call it a gap rather than a clean bill. What she is known for is a conviction over how she wielded power, not a campaign against a group. Her speeches since leaving prison have been about party unity and national security.
The pardon came in December 2021 from Moon Jae-in's government, after she had served 1,737 days, the longest of any Korean former head of state. Through her lawyer she apologised to the public for causing concern. Then she went home to Daegu and told supporters that “there are many dreams that were not achieved”. Yoon Suk-yeol, who as a prosecutor led the probe that brought her down, welcomed the pardon and later visited her at her Daegu home.
At her February 2024 memoir launch she said she was “troubled by disappointing the people through the mismanagement of those close to me”. That is an apology of sorts, though she also said she did nothing as president she was ashamed of. She defended the 2015 comfort women deal with Japan, saying “it was the best we could do”. Plenty of Koreans still see that deal differently.
Her return to the political stage is the live story. In August 2026 the party's floor leader visited her in Daegu and invited her to the lawmakers' retreat. She told them “there is no enemy more dangerous than division within” and pushed for more focus on security. Analysts read it as an attempt to rally conservative voters in Daegu and the surrounding region.