Why do Koreans elect such awful leaders?

A Rasputin-like figure, religious cults, shamans, influence-peddling, extortion and loads and loads of Viagra. It would be tempting to think that a worse leadership couldn’t befall South Korea than President Park Geun-hye. Think again.

Let’s start at the start. Once a journalist who fought for independence under the Japanese, Syngman Rhee became the first president in 1948, then ruled as a fanatically anti-communist dictator. He massacred hundreds of thousands of suspected communist men, women and children on Jeju Island – an atrocity he repeated after the fall of Pyongyang. Then there were the 90,000 draftees who froze to death because the money to heat the barracks was embezzled, partly for Rhee’s political fund. Or the collaborators who had tortured and killed independence activists that he refused to arrest. Or the fact that he supported total war with China while telling Australian, British, Canadian and New Zealand troops to get out. Or his decision to tell US forces to get out, too, for negotiating the ceasefire and then trying to sabotage the deal, for example by freeing 25,000 prisoners of war.

Despite it all, he was a symbol of victory over the Japanese and the North and was hugely popular, winning four elections. He even changed the constitution to allow for unlimited terms. Then in 1960, Rhee claimed the election for vice-president had been rigged because his friend lost. People protested, police shot some of them and Rhee resigned and fled with his Austrian wife to Hawaii where he lived the rest of his life.

Watch: South Koreans celebrate President Park Geun-Hye's impeachment