A South Korean court on Friday sentenced former South Korean President Park Geun-hye to an additional eight years for abusing state funds and violating election laws.
She now faces the prospect of more than three decades behind bars. She's already serving a 24-year prison term over a massive corruption scandal that led to her removal from office last year.
In this Aug. 7, 2017, file photo, former South Korean President Park Geun-hye, left, arrives for her trial at the Seoul Central District Court in Seoul. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon, File)
Seoul Central District Court on Friday found her guilty of causing substantial losses to state coffers by unlawfully receiving about 3 billion won ($2.6 million) from chiefs of the National Intelligence Service during her presidency and sentenced her to six years in prison.
However, she was found not guilty of bribery charges related to the money transfers. The court said it was unclear whether the spy chiefs sought or received favors in return.
The court separately sentenced Park to two years in prison for breaking election laws by meddling in her party candidate's nomination while attempting to win more spots for her loyalists ahead of the parliamentary elections in 2016.
She didn't appear in court.
Park's conservative party failed to gain a majority in the National Assembly after the parliamentary vote in April 2016. Analysts then said voters were frustrated over what they saw as Park's heavy-handed and uncompromising leadership style and inability to tolerate dissent within her party, which triggered rifts between her loyalists and reformists.
The party's defeat loomed large months later in December when an opposition-controlled parliament suspended Park's powers by passing a bill on her impeachment. Millions of protesters had poured onto the streets calling for Park's ouster amid allegations that she colluded with a longtime confidant to take tens of millions of dollars from companies in bribes and extortion and allowed the friend to secretly manipulate state affairs. The court convicted Park on most of these charges when it sentenced her to 24 years in prison in April.
The ruling marked a stunning fall from grace for the country's first female leader who won the 2012 presidential election by more than a million votes. Park enjoyed overwhelming support from conservatives who remember her father, staunch anti-communist dictator Park Chung-hee, as a hero whose aggressive industrial policies lifted the nation from the devastation of the 1950-53 Korean War and rescued millions from poverty. Critics see the elder Park as a brutal dictator who tortured and executed dissidents.
While Park's prison term currently adds up to 32 years, this could change, and potentially get even longer, depending on rulings of appeals courts. Prosecutors appealed Park's 24-year term on charges including bribery and abuse of state power and are now demanding 30 years in prison. The Seoul High Court will rule on the case on Aug. 24.
Following her impeachment, Park was formally removed from office following a ruling by the country's Constitutional Court in March last year and was arrested weeks later.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Justice Department told an appeals court Saturday that a judge did not have the authority to order the Trump administration to broker the return of a Maryland man who was mistakenly sent to a notorious El Salvador prison, and it suspended a government lawyer who admitted in court that the deportation was an error.
The government's attorneys asked the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to pause a Friday ruling by U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, who ordered the administration to “facilitate and effectuate” Kilmar Abrego Garcia's return to the U.S. by late Monday night.
“A judicial order that forces the Executive to engage with a foreign power in a certain way, let alone compel a certain action by a foreign sovereign, is constitutionally intolerable,” they wrote.
The appeals court asked Abrego Garcia's lawyers to respond to the government's filing by Sunday afternoon.
Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old Salvadoran national, was arrested in Maryland and deported last month despite an immigration judge’s 2019 ruling that shielded him from deportation to El Salvador, where he faced likely persecution by local gangs.
His mistaken deportation, described by the White House as an “administrative error,” has outraged many and raised concerns about expelling noncitizens who were granted permission to be in the U.S.
During a court hearing Friday at a federal court in Greenbelt, Maryland, Justice Department attorney Erez Reuveni conceded to Xinis that Abrego Garcia should not have been removed from the U.S. or sent to El Salvador. Reuveni could not tell the judge upon what authority he was arrested in Maryland.
“I’m also frustrated that I have no answers for you for a lot of these questions,” he said.
But by Saturday, Reuveni had been placed on leave by the Justice Department, a department spokesperson confirmed. His name was not on Saturday’s filing to the appeals court.
“At my direction, every Department of Justice attorney is required to zealously advocate on behalf of the United States. Any attorney who fails to abide by this direction will face consequences,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement.
Xinis, who was nominated by President Barack Obama, ruled Friday that there was no legal basis for Abrego Garcia’s detention and no legal justification for his removal to El Salvador, where he has been held in a prison that observers say is rife with human rights abuses.
Abrego Garcia’s attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said the government has done nothing to get his client back, even after admitting its errors.
“Plenty of tweets. Plenty of White House press conferences. But no actual steps taken with the government of El Salvador to make it right,” he told the judge on Friday.
The White House has cast Abrego Garcia as an MS-13 gang member and doubled down on that claim after Friday’s hearing. Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have countered that there is no evidence he was in MS-13.
Abrego Garcia had a permit from DHS to legally work in the U.S., his attorney said. He served as a sheet metal apprentice and was pursuing his journeyman license. His wife is a U.S. citizen.
Abreho Garcia fled El Salvador around 2011 because he and his family were facing threats by local gangs. In 2019, a U.S. immigration judge granted him protection from deportation to El Salvador.
Government lawyers say they have no control over Abrego Garcia and no authority to arrange for his return — “any more than they would have the power to follow a court order commanding them to 'effectuate' the end of the war in Ukraine, or a return of the hostages from Gaza.”
“It is an injunction to force a foreign sovereign to send back a foreign terrorist within three days’ time. That is no way to run a government. And it has no basis in American law," they wrote.
Associated Press writer Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington contributed to this report.
Jennifer Vasquez Sura, the wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia of Maryland, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, speaks during a news conference at CASA's Multicultural Center in Hyattsville, Md., Friday, April 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
