UPDATE - Rally piles pressure on SKorean president

UPDATES WITH PROTEST OVER AND TO ADD PHOTOS

By Alex Jensen

SEOUL (AA) - Thousands of protesters gathered in central Seoul on Saturday singing, chanting, and holding banners calling for South Korean President Park Geun-hye to step down.

Organizers estimated that up to 200,000 took part in the demonstration in Gwanghwamun square in central Seoul, following numerous protests nationwide since a major scandal erupted around the president last month.

Police, however, estimated the size of the crowd at about 45,000.

Park issued her second apology Friday for turning to a private citizen for advice on key policy speeches.

The same confidante, Choi Soon-sil, is currently under arrest and accused of wielding undue influence over state affairs in addition to abusing her connections for personal gain.

The president opened the way “if necessary” for an unprecedented investigation into her own potential involvement in snowballing corruption claims on a day when Gallup Korea placed her approval rating at a record-low 5 percent.

With South Korea at a political standstill as opposition parties refuse to accept Park’s attempted Cabinet shake-up, the weekend’s rally came at a tense moment for the country.

It is around a year since farmer Baek Nam-gi fell into a coma after being struck by a police-fired water cannon during a previous anti-government rally in Seoul, and protesters also gathered in the capital to hold a funeral for him Saturday.

Baek later died.

While the police deployed around 20,000 officers, according to local news agency Yonhap, they were under orders not to provoke demonstrators – although concerns remained about what would happen if the crowd tried to march on the presidential office.