South Koreans have been eating chicken to celebrate the removal of Park Geun-hye, in a satirical nod to a derogatory nickname for the former president.

South Korea’s constitutional court forced Park from office on Friday over an influence-peddling scandal involving one of her close friends and the country’s powerful chaebol conglomerates.

Why was Park impeached? Park Geun-hye is the most prominent figure in a wide-ranging corruption and cronyism scandal. She and her longtime confidante, Choi Soon-sil, are accused of conspiring to pressure companies, including Samsung, to donate large sums to two nonprofit foundations Choi set up. Choi is accused of using the money for personal gain, which she denies. Park admitted behaving “naively”, but denies coercing companies.

Park is also accused of giving Choi unlawful access to state affairs and and allowing her to influence policy, including Seoul’s stance on North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme.

Even before the scandal, Park’s opponents called her “Chicken Geun-hye”, both a play on words – her family name rhymes with chicken in Korean – and a reference to what they see as her lack of intellect and stilted public speaking.

“Chicken head” is an insult in Korea meaning idiot.

A restaurant in the city of Jeonju said it would offer chicken burgers at half price on Friday and Saturday to celebrate the court ruling.

“We prepared twice as many chicken burgers as usual and, wow, they have almost all gone,” said Yu Yeung-sang, owner of Eddis Kitchen.

In Seoul, a photograph of Friday’s menu at the national assembly cafeteria caused a stir on social media, with a noodle dish typically eaten at celebrations for lunch and chicken for dinner.



“Party noodles” was trending on Korean Twitter for much of the day and, after the verdict, some users uploaded photos of fried chicken.

탄핵기념 party noodles pic.twitter.com/Rs1Ia9nUGN — 이나 오터스 吏拿 (@dripdropt) March 10, 2017

South Korea’s biggest web portals, Naver and Daum, posted recommendations for chicken restaurants.

In 2014, officials in the town of Gwangju removed a painting from an exhibition by an artist who had painted a caricature of Park as a puppet. The artist, Hong Sung-dam, responded by replacing the caricature of Park with a cartoon chicken.

Park is South Korea’s first democratically elected leader to be forced from office, capping months of paralysis and turmoil over a corruption scandal that also landed the head of the Samsung conglomerate in court on trial. Park denies any wrongdoing.

A snap presidential election will be held within 60 days.