Court Issues Arrest Warrant For South Korean President Yoon Suk-Yeol
4- 31.12.2024, 10:07
- 2,522
Investigators must arrest the ousted president by January 6.
The Seoul District Court has issued an arrest warrant for ousted South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, who attempted to declare martial law in the country on December 3, for which he was impeached and charged with rebellion, the BBC reports.
Yoon Suk-yeol has ignored summonses for questioning three times in the past two weeks, and investigators filed a motion for an arrest warrant with the court on Sunday evening.
Yoon's lawyer calls the motion illegal.
Investigators must arrest the ousted president by January 6; after that time, they will have to ask the court to extend the warrant.
It is unclear whether investigators will be able to arrest Yoon: they may be hampered by the president's security and his supporters.
Security had previously denied investigators entry to the president's office and personal residence, even though they had a search warrant for these premises.
There have been cases in South Korean history where the authorities have given up on attempts to arrest famous politicians because their entourage and supporters physically prevented the arrest.
Yoon Suk-yeol's lawyers said on Monday that investigators have no grounds to arrest him, since the president has the constitutional right to declare martial law.
Yoon himself had already rejected accusations of attempted rebellion in the first half of December and said that the introduction of martial law was a “politically calculated decision” and that he had made it to protect the state from the opposition, which had paralyzed the government's work.
It is unknown where exactly Yoon Suk-yeol is now. He has been banned from leaving the country.
He officially remains president. He has been suspended from the presidency since December 14, when the parliament voted to impeach him, but in order to remove him from office, the impeachment must be approved by the Constitutional Court of South Korea.
At the same time, the Constitutional Court currently has only six judges out of the nine stipulated by law. The court can work with six judges, but in this case, one vote will be enough to reinstate Yoon.
In order to increase its chances, the parliament proposed the candidacies of the three missing judges to Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, who became acting President, but he rejected them.
The opposition in the parliament responded by accusing Han of acting in Yoon's interests, and on December 27 voted to impeach Han.
As a result, the first Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Economy and Finance Choi Sang-mok became acting President and Prime Minister. Now the opposition is threatening to impeach him as well.
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