Why so many South Koreans are fed up with their president

Since the country's democratic transition in the late 1980s, every former South Korean president has been ensnared by corruption scandals. But in their unpopularity none has plumbed the depth of Park Geun-Hye: for the past fortnight her approval rating has stood at 4%, down from a high of over 63% in mid-2013, six months into her term. Her reliance on an erstwhile confidante and friend, Choi Soon-sil, who used her connections to obtain funds and favors, has been the president's undoing. Ms Choi has been indicted for coercing South Korea's biggest business groups to funnel 80bn won ($70m) into two foundations that she controlled. Ms Park has become the first sitting president to be accused as a criminal accomplice. A parliamentary vote on a motion to impeach the president is set for December 9th. The scale of these allegations is the most evident explanation for the popular outrage over the scandal, which touches on sensitive themes in South Korea, including the fiddling of highly competitive university admissions (for Ms Choi's daughter); the power of cults; and the collusion of elites in business and government. But none of these are new to South Koreans. Yet a broad cross-section of South Korean society has poured out onto the streets in massive rallies. Four-fifths want to impeach the president. What makes this scandal different?

Part of the reason is that the allegations have fed into, and for some confirmed, long-held concerns about the influence of the Choi family over Ms Park. Ms Choi's father, Choi Tae-min, a six-times-married shaman cult leader, befriended Ms Park after her mother died during a failed assassination attempt on her father, Park Chung-hee, a former dictator. In one of her three recent mealy-mouthed apologies, Ms Park specifically denied one rumor: that shamanistic rituals had been held at the Blue House, the presidential office. Local media have portrayed Ms Choi as a puppeteer controlling Ms Park, managing everything from her wardrobe choices to policy on North Korea. South Koreans have been taken aback by such incompetence. But to Ms Park's critics it is all of a piece with her leadership style: imperial, aloof and out of touch with her people. Her press conferences have been scripted and rare. Despite enormous popular resentment, she has not explained her whereabouts during seven hours on the day that a South Korean ferry sank in 2014, when 300 drowned, many of them schoolchildren. Many had long worried that the "Queen of Elections", as she was nicknamed in her early political years, had surrounded herself with courtiers: mainly yes-men who had advised her father.

If she was greeted by foreign observers as South Korea's first female leader, many at home find parallels to the peninsula's last (Queen Min of the late 19th century regularly sought the advice of shamans, two of which she employed in her court). For many, Ms Park's political legitimacy was inherited from her parents; she took over official duties as first lady after her mother was shot. In 2012 a former aide, Jeon Yeo-ok, wrote in a memoir that to Ms Park "South Korea was her country, built by her father; the Blue House was her home; and the presidency was her family job". And, in imperial tradition, Korean presidents have kept a lot of power: they appoint and fire ministers, including the prime minister. So when things go wrong, they tend to be blamed. The botched government response to the ferry accident in 2014 uncovered corruption in the coast guard and regulatory bodies; but it was Ms Park who was the primary target of people's anger.

Her parentage has always sat uncomfortably with younger voters, many put off by the idea of a dictator's daughter governing democratic South Korea. But most striking has been the turning away of her longstanding fans and voter base: conservatives in their 50s and 60s, nostalgic for Park, who credit him with having made South Korea prosper. They feel she has betrayed them, as well as her father's legacy. Some memorials to Park have been defaced recently, including a hall at his birthplace that was set on fire last week (indicating how closely the two are linked in popular minds). In a visitors' book at the hall, one entry said that Ms Park had "tarnished her father's reputation". Her political opponents, including the mayor of Seoul and liberal MPs, have said that she is damaging the national pride by holding on to power. In presidential elections after Ms Park's expected early departure, South Koreans will be looking for a candidate who might restore it.