Yoon Suk Yeol Detained, Taken for Questioning on Martial Law Declaration
South Korea's president faces charges of sedition and abuse of power, among others.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol was taken into custody at around 10:33 a.m. KST (8:33 p.m. ET) and will face questioning over his Dec. 3 declaration of martial law.
The operation which brought Yoon into custody was undertaken by a multijurisdictional team composed of over 1,000 personnel. Yoon has agreed to appear for questioning by the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO) despite previously defying summons relating to the matter and maintaining that the investigation into his declaration of martial law is illegal.
The arrest marks the culmination of a period of slowly slipping guardrails around Yoon in the aftermath of his short-lived martial law declaration.
Following the declaration, Yoon was impeached by the National Assembly on Dec. 14, meaning he was immediately suspended from executing the duties of the presidency. Prime Minister Han Duck-soo then assumed the position of acting president but was likewise impeached less than two weeks later.
On Friday, Jan. 10, Park Jong-joon resigned from his post as chief of presidential security while Acting President Choi Sang-mok called for bipartisan cooperation to launch an independent investigation into the martial law crisis.
On Tuesday, Defense Ministry spokesperson Lee Kyung-ho announced that troops assigned to guard the president’s residence under the command of the Presidential Security Service (PSS) would no longer obstruct investigators' efforts to enter the premises as they had previously.
The previous attempt to detain Yoon at his residence in Seoul on Jan. 3 was thwarted when members of the PSS denied police forces and investigators from the CIO entry to Yoon’s residence. This resulted in a tense standoff lasting approximately six hours before the CIO suspended the attempt.
Shortly before the attempt, and in the interim, large crowds gathered around the residence demonstrating both in favor of Yoon’s detainment and in his defense, further complicating the situation for law enforcement and security officials.
There were no reports of violence or injury during the second, successful attempt to bring Yoon into custody. South Korea’s Constitutional Court will launch the second hearing in Yoon’s impeachment trial on Friday, Jan. 16, regardless of whether or not Yoon appears.