South Korean investigative authorities seeking to arrest impeached President Yoon Seok-yeol have begun a new attempt to execute an arrest warrant on charges of rebellion related to the declaration of martial law on December 3, and are targeting supporters of the president. There was a collision with them.
Early Wednesday morning, a Corruption Investigation Bureau (CIO) vehicle arrived in front of Yun's mountainside villa in Seoul, where he had been barricaded for weeks.
Investigators said they would detain anyone who tried to block the execution of the new warrant, Yonhap News reported.
Roads around the site were blocked off by police buses and thousands of police officers were on the scene.
However, a crowd of Yoon supporters, most of them elderly, gathered near the gates of his official residence and around a makeshift stage, calling the arrest warrant a “fake” and giving a speech calling for the arrest of opposition leader Lee Jae-myung. went.
Many people held up red lights and banners in Korean and English that read “Stop the Steal” and “Chinese Communist Party Go Out,” even though major election observers and courts have not expressed concern. , made baseless claims such as election manipulation and suspicions of Chinese interference. Regarding the parliamentary vote in April last year in which the opposition party won a decisive victory.
Mr. Yun's brief seizure of power has left him facing arrest, imprisonment, and even the death penalty.
The president plunged South Korea into its worst political crisis in decades after sending soldiers into parliament, upsetting East Asia's vibrant democracies and briefly returning it to the dark days of military rule.
If the court-ordered warrant is successfully executed, Yoon will become the first sitting president in South Korean history to be arrested.
However, the first attempt to arrest Yun on January 3 failed after several hours of tense standoffs with presidential guards who remained unfazed by investigators' efforts to execute the warrant.
A joint CIO and police team later secured a new warrant and assembled as many as 1,000 officers to arrest Yun on Wednesday, local media reported.
It also threatened to detain security personnel who prevented the arrest of a sitting leader.
More details coming soon…
