South Korean police arrive at impeached president's home in second attempt to detain him

TWO VEHICLES BELONGING to South Korean investigators probing impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol have arrived outside his official residence as they prepared to execute a new arrest warrant, Yonhap News TV reported.

This is the second attempt at detaining Yoon and comes after he failed to appear at an impeachment hearing today. 

“Two CIO vehicles have arrived in front of the (presidential) residence,” Yonhap News TV reported, referring to the Corruption Investigation Office that is probing Yoon’s short-lived martial law declaration last month.

It came as thousands of the embattled leader’s die-hard supporters massed outside to protect him, AFP news agency reporters saw.

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Yoon’s short-lived 3 December power grab left him facing arrest, imprisonment or, at worst, the death penalty.

He plunged South Korea into its worst political crisis in decades after sending soldiers to storm parliament, shaking the vibrant East Asian democracy and briefly lurching it back to the dark days of military rule.

If the court-ordered warrant is successfully executed, Yoon would become the first sitting president in South Korean history to be arrested.

But a first attempt to arrest Yoon on 3 January failed after a tense hours-long standoff with his presidential guards, who refused to budge when investigators tried to execute their warrant.

A joint team of the CIO and police have since secured a new warrant and massed as many as 1,000 personnel for Wednesday’s attempt to detain Yoon, according to local media reports.

They have also threatened to detain any guards who obstructed the sitting leader’s arrest.

- © AFP 2024