South Korea’s anti-corruption agency said it received a new court warrant on Tuesday to detain impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol after its previous attempt was blocked by the presidential security service last week.
The Corruption Investigation Office for High-Ranking Officials, which plans to question the embattled president on rebellion allegations over his short-lived martial law decree on Dec. 3, didn’t immediately confirm how long the warrant would remain valid.
The agency’s chief prosecutor, Oh Dong-woon, refused to answer when asked by lawmakers when the warrant would expire, saying such information is sensitive as the agency and police contemplate ways to execute it.
Detention warrants typically last seven days but can be extended to around 10 days. Oh didn’t say when investigators planned to make their next attempt to detain Yoon.
The Seoul Western District Court last week had initially issued a warrant to detain Yoon and a separate warrant to search his residence after he repeatedly defied authorities by refusing to appear for questioning.
About 150 anti-corruption agency investigators and police officers attempted to detain Yoon on Friday but retreated from his residence in Seoul after a tense standoff with the presidential security service that lasted more than five hours. The investigators did not make another attempt to detain Yoon and the previous court warrants expired after a week on Monday.
If investigators manage to detain Yoon, they will likely ask a court for permission to make a formal arrest. Otherwise, he will be released after 48 hours.
The anti-corruption agency and police have pledged to make a more forceful effort to detain Yoon, which could be a complicated process as long as he remains in his official residence.
The anti-corruption agency is leading a joint investigation with the police and military into Yoon’s brief power grab, which included declaring martial law and dispatching troops to surround the National Assembly. Lawmakers who managed to get past the blockade voted to lift martial law hours later.
Yoon’s presidential powers were suspended after the opposition-dominated Assembly voted to impeach him on Dec. 14, accusing him of rebellion. The Constitutional Court has started deliberations on whether to formally remove Yoon from office or reinstate him.
Members of the presidential security staff were seen installing barbed wire near the gate and along the hills leading up to the presidential compound over the weekend.
Oh confirmed to lawmakers that the agency was debating with police on whether to arrest members of the presidential security staff if they forcefully obstruct efforts to detain Yoon. Police have said they are considering “all available options” to bring Yoon into custody and haven’t publicly ruled out the possibility of deploying SWAT teams, although it’s unclear whether investigators would risk escalating a confrontation with presidential security forces, who are also armed.
Park Jong-joon, chief of the presidential security service, has hit back against criticism that it has become Yoon’s private army, saying it has legal obligations to protect the incumbent president. He and his deputy have so far defied summonses by police, who planned to question them over the suspected obstruction of official duty following Friday’s events.
In a parliament hearing Tuesday, Oh criticized the country’s acting leader, Deputy Prime Minister Choi Sang-mok, for instructing police to oblige with the presidential security service’s request to deploy personnel to Yoon’s residence to beef up security ahead of Friday’s detention attempt. The police did not carry out Choi’s instruction, and Oh said the agency was reviewing whether Choi’s actions constituted an obstruction of official duty.
The agency has repeatedly called for Choi to instruct the presidential security service to comply with the execution of the detention warrant against Yoon. Choi hasn’t commented.
Yoon’s lawyers argued the detention and search warrants against the president cannot be enforced at his residence due to a law that protects locations potentially linked to military secrets from search without the consent of the person in charge — which would be Yoon. They also argue the anti-corruption office lacks the legal authority to investigate rebellion charges and delegate police to detain Yoon.
Yoon’s lawyers on Monday filed complaints with public prosecutors against Oh and six other anti-corruption and police officers over Friday’s detention attempt, which they claim was illegal. The lawyers also filed complaints against the country’s acting national police chief, the acting defense minister and two Seoul police officials for ignoring the presidential security service’s request to provide additional forces to block Yoon’s detention attempt.
