[Yonhap News Photo]
Angry protesters marched outside the heavily guarded residence of President Park Geun-hye Saturday, calling for her immediate resignation and arrest, after opposition parties signed a parliamentary motion to impeach the disgraced president.
The unprecedented march just in front of the presidential Blue House came after court judges sided with the organizers of candle-lit rallies, ordering police to open their barricades.
The roads and side streets near Park's residence were packed with an endless line of marchers shouting slogans such as "Down with Park Geun-hye" and "Arrest Park Geun-hye". Police formed tight barricades with their buses around Park's residence but did not interfere in the boisterous march.
The march was part of the sixth candle-lit rally in central Seoul where hundreds of thousands of citizens have gathered. Organizers said about two million citizens participated in rallies nationwide while police put the number of participants at less than 500,000.
Saturday's candle-lit protest in Seoul was the biggest of its kind since the scandal surfaced in late October.
[Photo by Namgung Jin-woong =timeid@ajunews.com]
In parliament, 171 opposition and independent legislators handed in a motion Saturday to impeach Park for bribery and violation of the constitution.
The motion, which will be put to a parliamentary vote next Friday, suggested Park should be impeached for allowing her longtime crony, Choi Soon-sil, to meddle in state affairs, and for extorting money from conglomerates.
In the impeachment, Park, who took office in early 2013 as South Korea's first female president, was also accused of failing to protect the lives of the people on April 16, 2014, when a ferry packed with high-school students sank off the southwest coast with the loss of more than 300 lives.
Despite her repeated denials, Park has been dogged by rumors that she was not in office for seven hours at that time because of plastic surgery.
"The only way to normalize state affairs is President's Park's early resignation as an impeachment vote is around the corner," Choo Mi-ae, head of the main opposition Democratic Party, said, leading a group of opposition legislators to the rally in central Seoul.
[Aju News DB]
The scandal has seriously damaged the president's authority, triggering the worst crisis of her political career. Many citizens want Park's immediate resignation, but the president insisted she would leave her fate to the National Assembly.
Last week an independent counsel was appointed to lead a special counsel probe into Park's role in the scandal. State prosecutors have already defined her as a criminal suspect.
Thousands of citizens staged a sit-down protest Saturday in front of the head office of the ruling Saenuri Party in western Seoul, asking it to vote for Park's impeachment. Pro-Park legislators have insisted that the president should step down voluntarily by the end of April.
Aju News Lim Chang-won = cwlim34@ajunews.com
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
