Spotlight: How long will protest against scandal-hit president last in S. Korea?

Every street corner in central Seoul, capital city of South Korea, is crowded with demonstrators on Saturday afternoon. People varied from couples with children and gray-haired men to secondary school students and labor unionists.

The street scene is a repetition of last Saturday when over 1.3 million people in the capital city alone marched at night and shouted for President Park Geun-hye's resignation.

It surpassed the June 1987 protest against the military dictatorship that drew about a million.

This Saturday marks the fourth of its kind since a political scandal involving President Park and her longtime confidante, Choi Soon-sil, burst into a fit of rage.

Organizers estimate about a million protesters would take to the streets nationwide, including a half-a-million turnout in Seoul.

Public sentiment is rife that the president connived at, or protected, wrongdoings committed by her decades-long friend, who is alleged to have meddled in state affairs from the shadows and peddling undue influence for personal gains.

Prosecutors had asked Park to be investigated no later than Wednesday, but Park's attorney delayed it to next week. The prosecution office opened a possibility to change the president's status into a criminal suspect when it indicts Choi and two former presidential secretaries on Sunday.

Under the country's constitution, a president has immunity from criminal indictment until the single, five-year term ends. Criminal investigation is considered possible during the presidency, but expert views are divided over the forcible questioning.

Many of South Koreans were enraged further at Park's postponement of the investigation date, but it might be true that not a few began to acclimate themselves to local media speculations given that even a day hasn't passed without new suspicions for over a month.

Winter is approaching, making it harder for people, especially the elderly or couples wheeling a baby carriage, to go outside for the protest on cold nights. The size of rallies may fall after reaching an apex on Nov. 12.

However, the possibility is open for future rallies to get more powerful as accumulated disenchantment with the Park administration exploded on the streets coinciding with Park;'s biggest political crisis since the first South Korean female leader took office in February 2013.

Park's approval rating stayed high in the first year of her presidency though the spy agency's political involvement in the 2012 presidential election was found. Her approval scores surged to 67 percent in September of the year on positive assessment of her diplomacy and security policy, according to a survey of Gallup Korea, local pollster.

Support for Park nosedived on the country's biggest maritime disaster on April 16, 2014. The Sewol passenger ferry tilted over and sank in southwestern waters, killing more than 300 passengers, most of them high school students on a school trip to the southern resort island of Jeju.

Increasing the number of deaths was the initial bungling of rescue operations. Park has yet to answer the question, which the bereaved families have raised about what the president was doing by the time the vessel capsized for seven hours. The families have joined the Saturday rally to demand Park's resignation.

In 2015, repeated failures to deal with the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) made South Korea become the most MERS-contagious country outside Saudi Arabia, where the viral disease first emerged in 2012 and over 1,000 cases have since been found.

The dishonored title was attributed to the bungling of initial government response under the absence of well-established control tower. The MERS corona virus infected 186 South Koreans, among whom 38 passed away.

Immature responses to the maritime catastrophe and the infectious disease breakout caused downturn in private consumption. Grieved South Koreans refrained from entertainments for months in 2014, while consumers were reluctant to go outside for fears of MERS contagion in 2015.

To tackle the economic slowdown, the Bank of Korea (BOK) cut its benchmark interest rate from 3.25 percent in July 2014 to an all-time low of 1.25 percent in June this year. The government alleviated regulations on mortgage financing to let potential home buyers get bank loans in an easier way.

Extra money supply encouraged households to purchase new apartments with borrowed money. It resulted in the record-breaking household debts, rather than an increase in corporate investment and employment which accommodative monetary and fiscal policies originally intended to.

The ruling Saenuri Party lost a majority of the 300-seat parliament in the April 13 general elections this year. Economic difficulties made voters turn their backs on the conservative party, while the younger generation voted for opposition parties going against pro-conglomerate policies.

Labor unionists, who participate in the Saturday rally to demand Park's resignation, say irregular workers increased while regular employees declined in about four years in Park's office. The labor reform, advocated by the president, allows companies to fire workers more comfortably even in normal times.

Secondary school students have also attended the mass rally to protest against state-authored history textbooks, which they believe will certainly beautify the 1910-45 Japanese colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula and the military dictatorships that lasted here for about three decades through 1987.

Complaints accumulated about Park's diplomatic and defense policies, including the July decision to deploy one Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery in southeast South Korea by the end of next year. Residents at the site have continued candlelight vigils every night since the decision was announced.

Civic groups have protested against the "final and irreversible" agreement in December last year with Japan on "comfort women," or Korean women who were forced into sexual slavery for Japanese troops before or during the Pacific War.

Opposition parties objected to the government's push to sign a military intelligence pact with Japan, the country's former colonial ruler, without social consensus. According to a recent survey, almost two-thirds of respondents went against the deal as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has yet to sincerely apologize for past brutalities.

There have been many different frustrations and dissatisfactions found in the Saturday rallies, but what they have demanded in one voice is the resignation of Park, who they believe already lost credibility and authority to govern their country.

Considering the mountain of disenchantment, candlelight rallies may not abate until the president steps down or be impeached. Candles lit every night may not go out even if a winter wind blows hard. Enditem