(Bloomberg) -- South Korea’s corruption watchdog filed for an extension of a warrant to arrest President Yoon Suk Yeol after their first attempt last week ended in failure following an hours-long standoff with his security team.
The Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials also asked the police to handle the arrest on their behalf following the failure. But police effectively rejected the request, saying there could be legal issues for them to execute a warrant obtained by the CIO.
“We will continue to consult with the CIO on executing the arrest warrant,” Baek Dong-heum, a senior police officer, told reporters Monday.
The application for the extension suggests a move to carry out the arrest may not happen until later in the week.
Either way, Yoon’s legal representative said the president will not cooperate and warned of legal action.
“The CIO is treating the police as its subordinate agency when it doesn’t have the authority to oversee a police investigation,” Yoon’s lawyer, Yoon Kab-keun, said in a text message to Bloomberg News.
Yoon’s representatives are challenging the investigators’ jurisdiction to arrest the president based on the CIO act regulating the watchdog’s operation. Insurrection is not included in the list of crimes the corruption agency can investigate under the law, though a clause says it can look into crimes related to abuse of power. The CIO has said it will investigate Yoon’s insurrection case based on that clause. The arrest of a sitting president would be the first in the nation’s history, if it materializes.
As investigators struggle to take Yoon into custody, the embattled leader fortified his residence with barbed wire fences, photos showed, further complicating efforts to arrest him. Yoon’s security chief said Sunday that his office will not back down from guarding the president, citing ongoing confusion over the investigators’ jurisdiction.
A team from the CIO tried to arrest the impeached leader on Friday but the officials abandoned their bid hours later as Yoon’s security team blocked their attempt with thousands of Yoon’s supporters gathered outside the president’s residence.
The probe team’s failure to arrest Yoon has raised questions over its ability to lead the investigation into the president. The CIO is a relatively new government agency established in 2021 as part of efforts to decentralize power concentrated in the prosecutors’ office.
South Korea has been in a political crisis since Yoon’s martial law declaration at the beginning of December. While the order was retracted after lawmakers raced to parliament to overturn the measure, the move rattled financial markets, hurt the local currency and disrupted diplomatic efforts.
Parliament has since voted to impeach both Yoon and Prime Minister Han Duck-Soo, who briefly took on the role of acting president following the short-lived decree. Finance Minister Choi Sang-Mok is now serving as acting president.
Park Chan-dae, floor leader of the main opposition Democratic Party, urged Choi to exercise his power to order the presidential security office to cooperate with the execution of the arrest, warning of unspecified “corresponding measures” if he does not take action.
After investigators withdrew from the presidential compound last week, Choi said citizens and civil servants on duty should not be harmed in the process of law enforcement. But he has refrained from actively exercising his power to give guidelines as government agencies collide over the president’s possible arrest.
Yoon has signaled his intention to fight his case in the impeachment trial to stay in office, saying his martial law decree was within his constitutional powers. The Constitutional Court is set to begin the trial on Jan. 14.
--With assistance from Shinhye Kang and Seyoon Kim.
(Updates with filing of request to extend warrant.)
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