SEOUL: South Korean President Park Geun-Hye was fired Friday as a court upheld her impeachment over a corruption scandal that has paralysed the nation at a time of mounting tensions in East Asia.
The unanimous decision brought to a climax months of political turmoil that saw millions of people take to the streets in weekly protests, and triggers a new presidential election to be held within 60 days.
That will offer South Korea a chance to draw a line under the scandal, which has occupied its attention for months, even as the North has unleashed new missile launches and threats that have raised international alarm.
Park, the country's first female president, also becomes its first leader to be removed by impeachment.
She loses her executive immunity from prosecution and is obliged to leave the Blue House -- although she did not do so Friday, with a spokesman saying her private residence still needed to be prepared.
Reading the verdict, constitutional court chief justice Lee Jung-Mi said Park's actions "seriously impaired the spirit of representative democracy and the rule of law".
"President Park Geun-Hye... has been dismissed," she said, sending opponents watching live on giant television screens outside the nation's top court into eruptions of joy.
"We won, we won," they chanted, cheering and hugging each other, some breaking down.
"I am so pleased that I cannot hold back tears," said Shin Seo-Young, 43, clasping her friend. "This is a sweet revenge."
A few hundred metres away, and separated by a huge police presence, a rival protest by the president's flag-waving supporters were stunned.
"We don't accept this decision," said Cho Bong-Am, 60, a kindergarten operator. "We will take to the streets to fight to the end."
Scuffles broke out as the largely older pro-Park crowd tried to drag away buses and break through the police barricades to reach the court.
Police -- more than 20,000 of whom were deployed in the capital -- used pepper spray to try to subdue them and two protestors died, one of them apparently killed when a speaker fell on him from a police vehicle.
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