South Korea’s ex-president is arrested on charges of bribery and abuse of power

PARK GEUN-HYE has had a tough couple of weeks: first the constitutional court upheld a parliamentary motion to impeach her on March 10th, removing her from the presidency. That step also deprived her of her immunity from investigation as president—allowing prosecutors to pounce. They had been waiting for months to serve her with an arrest warrant; on March 30th judges weighed the merits of their request in an extraordinarily long day of deliberation. Ms Park spent nine hours at a local court, as the judge deliberated. When she left her home in Seoul to attend the hearing, flag-waving supporters lined the streets; several lay down in the road in an attempt to block her path to court.

It was to no effect: shortly before dawn on March 31st, Ms Park was arrested at the prosecutors’ office. The justice who approved her pre-trial detention said that the main charges against her were “demonstrable” and that, were she allowed to leave, she might destroy evidence. Prosecutors had submitted 120,000 pages of documents to the court earlier this week concerning the 13 charges against Ms Park. In their warrant they noted that Ms Park had “let down the trust of the people”, was “consistently denying objective facts”, and “showing no signs of remorse”.