President

Institutional context

The President of South Korea is the head of state and head of government, directly elected to a single five-year term under the 1987 constitution. From 1948 through February 2013 every holder was male.

Career path

Park Geun-hye (born 1952) is the daughter of Park Chung-hee, who ruled South Korea as president from 1963 until his assassination in 1979. After her mother's assassination in 1974 she served as acting first lady through her father's remaining tenure. She entered formal politics in 1998, served in the National Assembly, and led the Grand National Party (later Saenuri Party) during 2004–2006 and 2011–2012.

Appointment

Park won the December 2012 presidential election against Moon Jae-in with approximately 51.6 percent of the vote and was sworn in on 25 February 2013. She is the first woman elected as head of state in East Asia.

Tenure

Four years and thirteen days. Tenure was dominated by the Choi Soon-sil scandal that emerged in 2016 — a corruption case involving influence-peddling by a private confidante. The National Assembly impeached Park on 9 December 2016 by a vote of 234–56. The Constitutional Court upheld the impeachment unanimously on 10 March 2017, removing her from office. She was the first South Korean president to be removed by impeachment.

Cluster context

Park's 2013 appointment is the dataset's first East Asian first-woman head of state, three years before Tsai Ing-wen's election in Taiwan (2016). Her impeachment alongside Yingluck Shinawatra's 2014 removal in Thailand and Rousseff's 2016 impeachment in Brazil constitutes a documented mid-2010s pattern of woman heads of state and government being removed through constitutional procedures.

Sources

• Wikipedia — Park Geun-hye
• Wikipedia — President of South Korea