Choi Soon-sil

Choi Soon-sil held no office and no security clearance and brought down a South Korean president by editing her speeches. She was the daughter of Choi Tae-min, a religious figure who attached himself to Park Geun-hye after her mother was assassinated in 1974 and who was described in a diplomatic cable as having complete control over the young woman's body and soul. The friendship continued into Park's presidency from 2013. Choi received drafts of presidential speeches and policy documents on a tablet computer, which a broadcaster obtained in 2016 and which is what made the story unanswerable; she also pressured conglomerates including Samsung into paying tens of millions of dollars into two foundations she controlled. Weekly candlelit demonstrations reached over a million people. The National Assembly impeached Park in December 2016 and the Constitutional Court removed her unanimously in March 2017. Choi was sentenced to twenty years, later reduced to eighteen, for abuse of power, coercion and bribery, and separately for using her influence to get her daughter admitted to Ewha Womans University, which brought down that university's president too. Her daughter Chung Yoo-ra, an equestrian, was at the centre of the university case and was extradited from Denmark to face it. Samsung's Lee Jae-yong was convicted of bribing the foundations to smooth a merger that consolidated his control of the group, and was imprisoned, released and later pardoned. Choi changed her legal name to Choi Seo-won in 2018, which Korean reporting treated as an attempt to escape the association. Park Geun-hye was sentenced to more than twenty years and was pardoned in December 2021. The case is the reason South Korean law on presidential influence and conglomerate donations was tightened afterwards.

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