SEOUL — South Korea’s anti-corruption watchdog has secured a warrant extension to arrest impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol and a second attempt to take the embattled leader into custody could happen as early as Wednesday.
The Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials secured an extension of the initial warrant on Tuesday after the original warrant expired a day earlier, according to a text message from the team. The investigators declined to confirm how long the new warrant is valid for.
Last week, the CIO failed to arrest Yoon after facing resistance from the president’s security team. The CIO wants to take Yoon into custody and question him for his botched martial law decree, which led to his impeachment. Yoon has repeatedly defied CIO’s order to appear before the agency. South Korea is reeling from Yoon's short-lived imposition of martial law on Dec 3, which has plunged the country into its worst constitutional crisis in years.
As Yoon’s potential arrest emerges as the next flashpoint, the two sides are split over which court has the authority to issue a warrant.
President Yoon would comply only if he were formally indicted or a proper court issued a more extensive form of arrest warrant, his lawyer Yoon Kap-keun said at a televised briefing on Wednesday. The lawyer maintained that the CIO does not have the authority to investigate insurrection.
Under the law, the Seoul Central District Court has primary jurisdiction over CIO-related cases and the agency had sought most of its previous warrants from that court. Yoon's lawyers contend the CIO sought its warrant from the Seoul Western Central District Court because it was not confident it would secure one from the central court. The CIO said it chose the western court based on the location of Yoon's residence.
Any deployment of special operations unit to detain Yoon would amount to an act of insurrection, he said.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, his wife Kim Keon-hee, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and his wife Yuko Kishida attend a dinner at the presidential residence in Seoul, South Korea, on May 7, 2023. (File photo: Reuters)
CIO and police are working on their next move just as the president has fortified his residence with barbed wire fences, while his security chief has vowed not to back down from guarding the president.
Some politicians have urged law enforcement authorities to exercise their power to take the president into custody even if that involves a physical clash in the process.
"It will have a catastrophic impact on the country to show that one can refuse to cooperate with an investigation agency that has a legitimate court-issued warrant and more troubling is to show that you can resist with physical force by holding weapons," lawmaker Chun Ha-ram of minor Reform Party said in a radio interview with South Korean broadcaster CBS.
Police are reviewing whether to arrest Yoon’s security staff on site if they hinder their arrest efforts again, Yonhap News reported, citing a police officer it did not identify.
