Park, who was serving his third time period as mayor of Seoul, a metropolis of 10 million, had usually been cited as a doable successor to President Moon Jae-in, whose single five-year time period is about to run out in 2022
Seoul: The Mayor of Seoul, the nation’s second-most highly effective official and a possible presidential candidate, was discovered useless simply days after a secretary in his workplace informed the police that he had sexually harassed her since 2017, authorities mentioned on Friday.
A Seoul police officer confirmed early Friday that the physique of the mayor, Park Gained-soon, had been found on a hill in northern Seoul, a number of hours after his daughter had reported him lacking.
Phrase of the mayor’s demise and its doable hyperlinks to sexual misconduct despatched shock waves throughout the nation, not solely as a result of Park was a political star but additionally as a result of he had lengthy been seen as a champion of ladies’s rights. His positions stood out in a rustic the place males dominate society’s higher echelons, imposing a strictly hierarchical code that analysts say makes ladies susceptible to abuse and forces its victims to remain silent.
Park, 64, had cancelled his official schedule and known as in sick to Metropolis Corridor on Thursday, the day after the secretary had filed her criticism. His daughter informed police that he had left house after leaving a cryptic, “will-like message,” in keeping with Yonhap, the nationwide information company, which cited an nameless police supply. That element instantly fuelled hypothesis that Park may have taken his personal life.
The invention of Park’s physique got here after practically 600 law enforcement officials and emergency medical employees, aided by police canines, searched the hills in northern Seoul, the place his cellphone sign had final been detected.
Park had left his house in a taxi Thursday morning and received off at a park a number of minutes later, mentioned Choi Ik-su, a senior faulty on the Seoul Metropolitan Police Company, citing closed-circuit footage. Park’s physique was present in a wooded hill behind the park with the assistance of a police canine, Choi mentioned.
Police discovered no suicide notice on the scene, he mentioned, however there was additionally no signal that Park had been killed by another person.
A whole bunch of Park’s supporters — some tearfully shouting, “We love you, Park Gained-soon!” — gathered Friday in entrance of Seoul Nationwide College Hospital, the place his physique had been taken for an post-mortem.
Park, who was serving his third time period as mayor of Seoul, a metropolis of 10 million, had usually been cited as a doable successor to President Moon Jae-in, whose single five-year time period is about to run out in 2022. Park’s mayoral time period had been scheduled to finish in 2022.
Earlier than changing into mayor, Park was a outstanding human rights legal professional who based the nation’s most influential civil rights group. As a lawyer, he gained a number of main circumstances, together with South Korea’s first sexual harassment case. He additionally campaigned for the rights of so-called consolation ladies, Korean intercourse slaves who have been lured or pressured to work in brothels for the Japanese military throughout World Struggle II.
In the course of the army dictatorship of the 1980s, Park helped win the conviction of a police officer who molested a feminine pupil activist throughout an interrogation. Within the 1990s, he helped win damages for a instructing assistant at Seoul Nationwide College who accused her professor of refusing to rehire her after she protested undesirable sexual advances. It was the primary sexual harassment case in South Korean historical past.
Lately, the #MeToo motion has rippled throughout South Korea, resulting in a sequence of high-profile circumstances. Girls have come ahead with accusations of sexual abuse towards an array of outstanding males, together with theater administrators, politicians, professors, non secular leaders and a former coach for the nationwide speedskating group. Most of the accused have apologized and resigned from their positions. A number of have confronted prison expenses.
In April, Oh Keo-don, mayor of Busan, South Korea’s second-largest metropolis, admitted to sexual misconduct and resigned after a public servant accused him of sexually assaulting her in his workplace.
In 2018, Ahn Hee-jung, a rising star in Moon’s governing Democratic Occasion and a presidential hopeful, stepped down as governor of South Chungcheong province after his secretary went on tv to accuse him of repeatedly sexually assaulting her. He was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in jail on rape expenses.
Moon has supported the #MeToo motion, however accusations towards outstanding allies have been significantly disturbing for his governing liberal camp.
Park, Ahn and Oh have been all thought-about outstanding members of the president’s Democratic Occasion. Park and Ahn had constructed profitable careers as activists who fought for democracy and human rights beneath the nation’s previous army dictatorship.
Politicians with backgrounds like theirs have lengthy been handled by South Koreans as holding the next ethical floor than their conservative counterparts, a lot of whom have been related to the dictatorship.
Park helped discovered the Individuals’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, one in every of South Korea’s strongest civic teams, which campaigned towards corrupt ties between politics and massive companies in a rustic that has been tormented by scandal.
He had a repute for being a tireless critic of inequality and a vocal antagonist of former President Park Geun-hye, supporting large rallies towards her in central Seoul that finally led to her impeachment and ouster on corruption expenses in 2017.
He had additionally been one of the aggressive leaders in South Korea in preventing the coronavirus pandemic, taking a sequence of steps geared toward containing its unfold, like shutting down nightclubs. Seoul has reported only one,390 circumstances.
South Korea has the very best suicide charge among the many member nations of the Organisation for Financial Cooperation and Improvement. It has been uncommon for politicians in South Korea to take their very own lives out of public disgrace.
However former President Roh Moo-hyun killed himself amid allegations of corruption towards his household in 2009. One other standard liberal politician, Roh Hoe-chan, additionally killed himself in 2018 when he confronted allegations of corruption.
Choe Sang-Hun c.2020 The New York Occasions Firm
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