by Admin
Jan 15, 2025
History was made on Wednesday morning after President Yoon Suk Yeol became South Korea’s first sitting president to be arrested and detained.
The historic event was filled with a lot of dramatic instances where the investigators had to cut security barb-wires and scale the fence of Yoon, 64, who is under investigation for insurrection due to a failed martial law order issued on December 3, which led to widespread turmoil in the country.
President Yoon has also been impeached by parliament and suspended from his duties. However, he will only be removed from office if the Constitutional Court upholds the impeachment.
Investigators from the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO) were unable to arrest him on January 3 after a six-hour standoff with the president’s security detail.
However, just before dawn on Wednesday, a much larger and coordinated team of investigators and police descended on his residence in central Seoul. They were equipped with ladders to climb over buses blocking the entrance and bolt cutters to remove barbed wire.
A team of around 1,000 officers involved in the arrest scaled walls and hiked up nearby trails to reach the presidential residence.
After several hours, authorities announced that President Yoon had been arrested.
In a three-minute video released just before his arrest, the 64-year-old leader stated that he would cooperate with the investigators while reiterating his previous claims that the warrant for his arrest was not legally valid.
The impeached president said “I decided to appear before the CIO, even though it is an illegal investigation, to prevent any unsavory bloodshed,”
However, President Yoon’s lawyers argued that his arrest was “illegal” because the CIO, as an anti-corruption agency, lacked the authority to investigate the insurrection allegations against Yoon. They also assert that the warrant was issued by the incorrect jurisdiction.
The same court later dismissed President Yoon’s request for an injunction to invalidate the arrest warrant, which the authorities assert is lawful.
The floor leader of the opposition Democratic Party, Park Chan-dae, stated that Wednesday’s arrest demonstrated that “justice in South Korea is alive.”
He said, “The arrest is the first step toward restoring constitutional order, democracy, and the rule of law”.
According to the current warrant, authorities can hold President Yoon for up to 48 hours after his arrest. After this period, they must obtain a new warrant to continue detaining him while the investigation is ongoing.
If the new warrant is granted, they can keep him in custody for up to 20 days before he must be brought to trial. If they do not secure a new warrant, Yoon must be released.
The country is currently being led by Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok as acting president. He was thrust into power after the first acting president, Han Duck-Soo was also impeached two weeks after taking over the office by the parliament which is dominated by the opposition party.