UPDATE - Another no-show by impeached SKorean president

UPDATES THROUGHOUT

By Alex Jensen

SEOUL (AA) - South Korean President Park Geun-hye missed the second hearing of her impeachment trial Thursday, forcing Seoul’s Constitutional Court to proceed without her.

Park’s absence from Tuesday’s inaugural hearing meant the session lasted less than 10 minutes, but this time the court’s nine justices were able to listen to arguments from both sides -- the suspended president’s lawyers and a parliamentary committee as it was the National Assembly that voted to oust her on Dec. 9.

With Park having already denied multiple charges including power abuse and allowing a secret confidante -- old acquaintance Choi Soon-sil -- to steer state affairs, her legal team indicated she would continue to avoid attending the trial in person.

“There is no evidence for her alleged bribery, abuse of authority and coercion based on objective facts,” attorney Lee Joong-hwan was quoted as saying by The Korea Herald.

For example, responding to the claim that the president helped force conglomerates to donate money to sports and culture foundations, Lee insisted she was only interested in promoting those sectors and “didn’t know that Choi was effectively in control of the foundations”.

But state prosecutors already named Park as an accomplice when indicting Choi late last year before handing the case over to an ongoing independent probe.

Choi repeated her previous plea of innocence when officially beginning her own trial at Seoul Central District Court Thursday.

She is also being asked to appear at Park’s next impeachment hearing on Tuesday, although three of four key witnesses skipped the latest Constitutional Court session.

Lawmaker Kwon Seong-dong, chair of the Assembly’s legislation and judiciary committee, spoke of the need to recover from a “vacuum in the running of state affairs”, even as Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn is acting as president until Park’s impeachment is either legally confirmed or overturned.

In a further development that looks bad for the government, independent investigators announced during a briefing it has collected evidence that Culture Minister Cho Yoon-sun and former presidential chief of staff Kim Ki-choon were involved in blacklisting critical artists and cultural figures.

The pair are to be questioned further over claims that those on the list were deprived of official support.

Since the start of her five-year term in 2013, critics have feared Park could lead the country back towards the authoritarian rule of her father Park Chung-hee, whose presidency came to an end with his assassination in 1979.