SEOUL, South Korea — As an hours-long standoff at the presidential residence continued, South Korea veered into uncharted legal and constitutional territory on Friday.
Investigators, backed by a reported 2,700 police, arrived at the location at around 8 a.m. with a warrant to arrest impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol.
No sitting South Korean president has ever been detained since the Republic of Korea was established in 1948.
Scuffles broke out inside the presidential residential compound between police and Presidential Security Personnel after investigators arrived, confused reports stated. Police apparently breached two cordons, but were halted at the entrance to the residence, news station YTN reported.
The Presidential Security Service – roughly equivalent to the U.S. Secret Service - have resisted previous attempts by police to enter presidential grounds to gather evidence.
Police have vowed to arrest persons blocking the action, including presidential bodyguards. The police told South Korean media that troops, possibly from the army’s Capital Defense Command, also resisted their entry.
By early afternoon, matters appeared to have reached an impasse. Investigators remained, but there was no sign of Mr. Yoon, while hundreds of his supporters gathered nearby.
Despite the tensions, no injuries have been reported.
Questions are being raised over who is in charge.
The president is the commander in chief of the armed forces, but Mr. Yoon has been impeached and his powers suspended. Acting President Choi Sang-mok, formerly Mr. Yoon’s finance minister, has made no apparent move.
Mr. Yoon is awaiting trial at the Constitutional Court, which is set to hold its second hearing into his case later Friday. The court has two prior presidential impeachments to draw upon as precedents.
The first-of-its-kind action underway at the presidential residence is being led by the relatively new Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials, The CIO has three times summoned Mr. Yoon for questioning, but he refused to comply with those summonses.
On Tuesday, the CIO was granted a court warrant to detain Mr. Yoon for up to 48 hours for questioning on charges of treason.
Treason is a crime for which a president cannot claim immunity. Mr. Yoon’s lawyers immediately sought to block the warrant.
“The execution of a warrant that is illegal and invalid is not lawful,” Yun Gap-geun, one of Mr. Yoon’s legal representatives, told media Friday, after news broke of this morning’s attempted seizure.
The court warrant expires Monday.
In expectation of investigators attempting an arrest, an estimated 10,000 Yoon supporters had rallied in freezing Thursday evening temperatures
Mr. Yoon’s residence is in the swanky Seoul neighborhood of Hannam Dong, home to, among other well-to-do persons, members of supergroup BTS.
There has been widespread anticipation that investigative bodies, which include police and Ministry of Defense investigators as well as the CIO, would seek to fulfill their warrant before the weekend, when many more pro-Yoon protesters are expected to gather.
The CIO is a relatively new body that was established under the previous government of left-leaning President Moon Jae-in in 2021 amid a power struggle with Mr. Yoon.
Mr. Yoon had been made chief prosecutor in June 2019. In that position, he launched a corruption probe into Mr. Moon’s minister of justice. Mr. Yoon also strongly resisted the Moon government’s demands for a reform of the state prosecution.
A prolonged political-judicial battle saw the resignation of two of Mr. Moon’s justice ministers.
With prosecution reform stalled, the entirely new CIO was proposed in December 2019 and established in January 2021.
Mr. Yoon stood down as head prosecutor in March 2021.
He was swiftly wooed by the right-wing party, which chose him as its presidential candidate. In 2022, in a brand-new political career, Mr. Yoon won the presidential election by a margin of less than 1 percentage point.
Friday’s extraordinary events originate in Mr. Yoon’s stunning Dec. 3 declaration of martial law, prompted by his anger at obstructionism in the opposition-controlled parliament and by suspicions of electoral interference.
The botched attempted was voted down within three hours by lawmakers who made their way into the National Assembly through cordons of police and special forces troops. The decree was rescinded by Mr. Yoon six hours after his TV broadcast declaring it. Remarkably no injuries, let alone deaths, were reported in the auto-coup attempt.
Disgraced and disempowered, Mr. Yoon was impeached by the National Assembly vote on Dec. 14. His successor, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, was subsequently impeached for refusing to sign off on the appointment of three judges to fill the Constitutional Court’s bench.
Mr. Han’s successor, Mr. Choi this week agreed on two of those judges, filling eight of the court’s nine seats.
At least six judges must vote to uphold a presidential impeachment.
• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.
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