06 November 2016•Update: 07 November 2016
By Alex Jensen
SEOUL
A Seoul court issued arrest warrants Sunday for a pair of now ex-aides to South Korean President Park Geun-hye.
Park could herself be subjected to questioning over a scandal that dragged her Gallup Korea approval rating down to just 5 percent last week.
She said during a televised apology Friday that she would consent to an investigation if needed.
With the Park administration set to rule until February 2018, several key advisers to the president are being linked to the leak of state documents and an alleged scam to force conglomerates to donate tens of millions of dollars.
The latest arrests involved former senior secretary for policy coordination An Chong-bum and ex-secretary for private presidential affairs Jeong Ho-seong, reported local news agency Yonhap.
An is suspected of collaborating with Choi Soon-sil -- the already detained mysterious presidential confidante who allegedly abused her connections for financial and personal gain.
The charge against Jeong is that he leaked state documents.
Public outrage spiked at the end of last month when Park admitted that she had sought help writing key policy speeches from Choi, a private citizen.
A series of protests culminated in as many as 200,000 demonstrators rallying in Seoul Saturday to call for the president's resignation, according to organizers -- in addition to smaller gatherings fueled by the same sentiment nationwide.
Meanwhile, Park's former senior secretary for civil affairs Woo Byung-woo was summoned to appear before prosecutors Sunday over corruption allegations that began to accumulate weeks before the present crisis.
Far from indicating any willingness to step down, the president's main move so far has been to pressure aides to resign and to pick a new prime minister, chief of staff and other officials -- although opposition lawmakers are refusing to endorse her picks, viewing her reshuffle as unilateral and an attempt to deflect her scandal.
