Portraits of South Korea's President Park Geun-hye and her aides are set in a mock prison during a rally in Seoul, yesterday.
Seoul: Tens of thousands of protestors turned out in Seoul for the eighth straight week yesterday, pushing for the swift and permanent removal of impeached South Korean President Park Geun-hye.
Unlike previous weeks, the demonstrators didn't have the streets of the capital all to themselves, with a sizeable rally by Park loyalists seeking to buttress support for the beleaguered president.
The main anti-Park protest began with a gathering in central Seoul, with organisers putting the turnout at around 300,000.
It then split into three columns, marching on the presidential Blue House, the office of the prime minister and on the Constitutional Court whose nine justices are considering the validity of the impeachment bill passed by the national assembly more than a week ago.
The court has 180 days to make a ruling, but the protesters are pressing for a swift judgement.
Although Park has been stripped of her substantial executive powers, she is allowed to retain the title of president and continue to live in the Blue House while the court deliberates.
The protesters are adamant that she should resign immediately and face criminal prosecution.
Park still has her supporters, many of them elderly voters who remain steadfast admirers of her father, the late military dictator Park Chung-Hee -- credited as the architect of the South's economic transformation but vilified as an authoritarian rights abuser.
Police said around 30,000 Park loyalists attended their own rally near the court earlier in the day to demand the impeachment bill be thrown out.
Waving national flags and clutching red roses they carried banners denouncing the anti-Park protests as a leftist conspiracy.
On Friday, Park's legal team formally submitted a 24-page rebuttal of the impeachment charges to the court, arguing that they had no legal basis.
"We can't accept that there was any violation of the constitution by the president... the impeachment motion should be rejected," one of her lawyers, Lee Joong-Hwan, said.
Park was impeached on numerous counts of constitutional and criminal violations ranging from a failure to protect people's lives to bribery and abuse of power.
