A New Test for South Korea's Young Democracy

In a ruling on Friday, the eight justices of South Korea’s Constitutional Court rejected four of the five impeachment charges against President Park Geun-hye. But they were unanimous on the fifth, which was enough for her to have to go. By giving her best friend Choi Soon-sil access to confidential documents and by forcing some conglomerates to donate to Choi’s sports and cultural foundations, Park had violated the Constitution, the justices said. “President Park impaired the spirit of democracy and the rule of law,” Acting Chief Justice Lee Jung-mi said, her court building ringed by riot police behind a wall of police buses that held back supporters of the embattled president. “Her violations of the Constitution and the law are a betrayal of the people’s trust and cannot