Court appoints state attorneys for S. Korea's Park

SEOUL: Ousted South Korean president Park Geun-Hye was assigned new state attorneys for her corruption trial, a court spokesman said Wednesday, a week after her own defence lawyers resigned to protest what they called biased proceedings.
Park faces multiple charges including bribery, coercion and abuse of power for offering governmental favours to tycoons, and is being held in custody.
She was impeached by parliament after months of mass protests against her over a sprawling graft scandal, and the constitutional court upheld the decision in Mar, dismissing her from office. She went on criminal trial in May.
But her entire defence team quit last week, accusing the court of bias, after Park's detention was extended for another six months. The proceedings have been put on hold indefinitely as a result.
A court spokesman said Wednesday that five state attorneys had been appointed to defend Park, but declined to disclose their names.
The trial is likely resume in mid-Nov, Yonhap news agency said, as the new lawyers have to review more than 120,000 pages of documents.
Park, the daughter of late dictator Park Chung-Hee, is the third former South Korean president to be charged with corruption in Asia's fourth-largest economy, where politics and big business have long been closely tied.
Two former army-backed leaders who ruled in the 1980s and 1990s Chun Doo-Hwan and Roh Tae-Woo both served jail terms after they retired for offences including bribery.
Another ex-leader, Roh Moo-Hyun, committed suicide in 2009 by jumping off a cliff after he was questioned over graft allegations. — AFP