Park Geun-hye's close friend who is at the heart of an influence-peddling scandal that led to her ouster on Friday apologized to the former president, the confidante's lawyer said.
"Defendant Choi Seo-won repeatedly apologized to the president and the people," her lawyer Lee Kyung-jae said in a press release. Seo-won is the name Choi Soon-sil changed to.
Earlier in the day, the Constitutional Court upheld the National Assembly's impeachment of Park over a string of corruption allegations implicating Choi. Park was immediately removed from the office.
One of the grounds for the ouster was that Park ordered one of her aides to take millions of dollars from local conglomerates to set up two dubious foundations, allegedly controlled by Choi.
Lee, however, denied such allegations.
"The justices will be sternly judged by history on whether they shed a light to South Korea in crisis or cast yet another shadow," Lee said in the release.
On the same day, a hearing on Choi was held at the Seoul Central District Court. She did not show any changes in her expression after she was told by her lawyer that Park was ousted. (Yonhap)
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