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Since the election of Donald Trump last Tuesday, protesters across the United States, thousands of them in downtown Los Angeles alone<\/a>, have taken to the streets to make their displeasure heard. Coincidentally, anti-presidential protests have also erupted in South Korea<\/a> own over the past few weeks, culminating in the unrelieved crush of humanity, comprising 500,000 to one million demonstrators \u2014 an astonishing number, even in a country with a rich tradition of protest<\/a> \u2014 that filled downtown Seoul on Saturday night. They came not to object to an undesireable president-elect, but to demand the resignation of Park Geun-hye, the president of more than three years who stands accused of having handed the reins of power to an unelected and previously obscure confidante, herself the daughter of a religious cult leader.<\/p>\n
In a widely circulated breakdown of the scandal<\/a>, a blogger known as The Korean lists the accusations against Park and her confidante Choi Soon-sil, who, under Park\u2019s watch, has been \u201crunning a massive slush fund, as she extorted more than $70 million from Korea\u2019s largest corporations,\u201d who routinely received \u201cconfidential policy briefings and draft presidential speeches \u2014 all on a totally unencrypted computer,\u201d and who \u201crigged the college admission process so that her daughter, not known to be sharpest tool in the shed, would be admitted into the prestigious Ewha Womans University.\u201d That last struck an especially sensitive nerve in this society, which has always turned a blind eye at embezzlement at all levels and especially in politics, but which can\u2019t stand anything that throws the prized \u201cfairness\u201d of its higher-education system<\/a> into question.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving survived a particularly tumultuous modern democratic history, Korean people may be the world\u2019s most cynical consumers of politics,\u201d writes The Korean. \u201cBut this. Even the most cynical Koreans were not ready for this. At first, there was a tiny bit of perverse relief, as all the bizarre actions of Park Geun-hye administration suddenly began to make sense. Why did the president only hold just three press conferences in the first four years of her administration? Why does the president always speak in convoluted sentences that make no sense? Why did the president fly off the handle and sue the Japanese journalist who claimed that she was with Choi Soon-sil\u2019s husband while the ferry Sewol was sinking in 2014<\/a>, drowning 300 school children? Why did the ruling party randomly host a shamanistic ritual in the halls of the National Assembly? Ohhhh<\/em>, the relief went. Now it all makes sense<\/em>.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n