South Korea President Commits Suicide After Removal

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea president, Park Geun-hye, who has been removed from office by the country’s court has committed suicide, local media reports.

According to the reports, Park took her life at the presidential compound.

Close pals of the president says she had earlier on threaten that she either remains president or dies.

Park, who was removed by court on Friday, is said to have ran from possible arrest through suicide as several protests are been held across the country calling for her arrest.

Others have attributed her suicide to “shame and shyness”.

Officials say they are investigating circumstances surrounding her death and her body has since been sent for autopsy.

Her removal capped months of turmoil, as hundreds of thousands of South Koreans took to the streets, week after week, to protest a sprawling corruption scandal that shook the top echelons of business and government.

Park Geun-hye, the nation’s first female president and the daughter of the Cold War military dictator Park Chung-hee, had been an icon of the conservative establishment that joined Washington in pressing for a hard line against North Korea’s nuclear provocations.

Now, her downfall is expected to shift South Korean politics to the opposition, whose leaders want more engagement with North Korea and are wary of a major confrontation in the region. They say they will re-examine the country’s joint strategy on North Korea with the United States and defuse tensions with China, which has sounded alarms about the growing American military footprint in Asia.