South Korea’s Constitutional Court began formal deliberations on Tuesday to decide whether to remove President Yun Seok-Yeol from office. The impeached leader has fled the scene and holed up in the fortified presidential palace, bracing for a “siege” by an entourage of up to 1,000 criminal investigators who plan to arrest him on suspicion of sedition. There is.
Yun has been suspended since being impeached by the National Assembly on December 14 for invoking a brief period of martial law 11 days earlier. However, he refused to resign. Instead, he has vowed to “fight to the end” to regain power through a trial in the Constitutional Court and has resisted requests to be questioned by officials conducting a separate investigation into the alleged rebellion.
Continued efforts to hold Mr. Yoon accountable for his declaration of military rule and his refusal to cooperate with previous investigations have left South Korea in a political deadlock, raising questions about the resilience of its decades-old democracy.
The Constitutional Court has the sole authority to decide whether the parliament’s impeachment is legitimate and whether Yoon should be formally removed from office or reinstated. As the first hearing began on Tuesday, small but loud rival groups of citizens engaged in a shouting match across the narrow street in front of the courtroom. The outer wall of the courtroom was decorated with flowers sent by Yoon’s supporters.
However, Mr. Yun did not appear. Yun’s lawyers said he feared he would be arrested by rebel investigators if he left the presidential palace. The court adjourned after four minutes on Tuesday when it was discovered that Yoon was absent. He announced that deliberations would resume on Thursday with or without him.
The court hearing is a double take on the drama surrounding the criminal investigation. When investigators first visited Yun’s residence on January 3 to process the detention warrant, bodyguards in cars and buses formed a human chain to prevent their approach. The agents withdrew and vowed to return with more personnel.
Tensions around the compound and concerns about possible clashes between the president’s bodyguards and police have escalated in recent weeks. The Presidential Security Bureau, led by Yun, turned the hilly area in central Seoul into a fortress, deploying buses and razor wire to seal off gates and walls. Insurgency investigators and police are meanwhile making detailed plans on how to break through the barrier and take Mr. Yoon into custody the next time they attempt to execute the warrant.
On Tuesday, Mr. Yoon’s chief of staff, Jeong Jin-seok, likened Mr. Yoon to a besieged leader who “remained alone in his castle as the sun set, with no one around to help him.” Ta.
“They have completed preparations to launch a siege,” Chong, a former journalist and lawmaker, said of police and investigators.
In the first unsuccessful attempt to capture Yun, about 100 prosecutors, investigators and police officers visited his residence, but were outnumbered 2-1 by the president’s bodyguards and soldiers. Police officials said they are developing plans to deploy 1,000 police officers, including officers specializing in crackdowns on drugs and other organized crime groups, for a second attempt.
Investigators and police met with officials from Yun’s presidential security department on Tuesday to discuss ways to resolve the standoff. However, there were no immediate signs of a solution.
Mr. Yun’s aides are trying to avoid the humiliation of making him the first sitting president to be detained by his own law enforcement agency and taken to headquarters in the south of the city.
His lawyers are contesting the legality of a court warrant for his detention. Instead, it proposed that investigators interrogate Mr. Yoon at his home or in a neutral venue, while allowing him to stand trial in the Constitutional Court and answer as a free man to other charges of sedition.
However, public opinion polls show that most South Koreans want Yoon to be arrested and expelled.
Cracks are beginning to appear in Yoon’s last line of defense, the Presidential Security Bureau. Park Jeong-joon, the police chief, resigned last week and turned himself in to police for investigation into whether he committed obstruction of justice while performing his duties. Prevented investigators from executing a court warrant.
The agency announced Monday that a senior official had been suspended after secretly meeting with police officers. The official was accused of cooperating with police by sharing information about the presidential palace, including its layout. But the agency said it did not punish those who “expressed their opinions” during internal meetings, and there was a heated debate among members of the presidential guard over whether it was right to block a fellow government official from executing a warrant. suggested that.
The Presidential Security Service is supported by police and military forces.
Both the police and military said they did not want their own soldiers or police officers to be involved in trying to arrest Mr. Yoon.
On Monday, main opposition leader Lee Jae-myung asked Vice Prime Minister Choi Sang-mok, who is the unelected acting president, to prevent the presidential guard from blocking officials from executing court-issued warrants. But Choi refused to take sides and urged both investigators and members of the presidential guard to resolve disputes peacefully rather than by “violent means.”