Impeached president faces down detention bid, stoking South Korea’s crisis

SEOUL, South Korea — When around 100 criminal investigators and police officers entered a hilly compound in central Seoul on Friday morning, they tried to achieve something that has never been done before in South Korea: detain a sitting president.

First, they made it through two blockades formed by parked vehicles and people. Then, when they came within 650 feet of the building where President Yoon Suk Yeol was believed to be holed up, they came face to face with an even more formidable barrier: 10 buses and cars along with 200 elite soldiers and bodyguards belonging to Yoon’s Presidential Security Service. Small scuffles erupted as the investigators tried in vain to break through and serve a court-issued warrant to take Yoon away.

Three prosecutors were allowed to approach the building. But there, Yoon’s lawyers told them they could not serve the warrant because it was “illegally” issued, according to officials who briefed news media about what happened inside the compound.

Outnumbered, the 100 officials retreated after a 5 1/2-hour standoff.

“It’s deeply regrettable,” the Corruption Investigation Office for High-Ranking Officials, the independent government agency that led the raid into the presidential compound Friday, said in a statement. It accused Yoon — who has already been suspended from office after being impeached by parliament last month — of refusing to honor a court-issued warrant. “We will discuss what our next step should be.”

The failure to bring in the deeply unpopular president deepened a growing sense of helplessness among South Koreans, exacerbated by the country’s sharply polarized politics. The nation appears rudderless and distracted by infighting at a time when it faces major challenges at home and on the international scene.

There is already uncertainty around its alliance with the United States as the unpredictable Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House. Seoul’s decades-old foe North Korea has sought to score propaganda points from the South’s political quagmire, with its state media reporting that its neighbor was in “paralysis of its state administration and spiraling sociopolitical confusion.”

And, at home, the crash of a Jeju Air passenger jet that killed 179 of the 181 people on board Sunday has added to a list of challenges that range from widespread labor strikes to rising household debts. On Thursday, the Finance Ministry sharply downgraded its growth forecast for 2025.

A Constitutional Court is deliberating whether to remove Yoon, who was impeached on Dec. 14 by the National Assembly. That came after he abruptly declared martial law 11 days earlier, prompting national outrage and calls for his ouster.

On Friday, the besieged Yoon vowed to fight to return to office through the Constitutional Court trial and showed he had no intention of voluntarily subjecting himself to criminal investigations. Yoon faces accusations that he committed insurrection by sending armed troops into the National Assembly during his short-lived military rule.

By refusing to honor the warrant, Yoon “kept adding more reasons he should be removed from office through impeachment,” said Lim Ji-bong, a professor of law at Sogang University in Seoul.

“He may think he survived today, but what he did today would not go down very well with the justices at the Constitutional Court and judges who would eventually try his insurrection case.”

Yoon is not the first South Korean politician who has defied court warrants to detain them. In 1995, prosecutors wanted to question former military dictator Chun Doo-hwan on insurrection and mutiny charges stemming from his role in a 1979 coup and a massacre of demonstrators the following year. He defied the summons and headed to his southern hometown, trailed by a crowd of supporters.

The prosecutors chased him there. After an overnight standoff, Chun surrendered himself.

But unlike Yoon, Chun was out of office when he faced the insurrection charge. Yoon, though suspended, is still guarded with the full support of his Presidential Security Service, a government agency that hires teams of elite bodyguards and anti-terrorist experts selected from the police, military and other government services.

“People who have seen him rely on his bodyguards as a shield against his legal trouble will see him as a coward,” Lim said.

The investigators warned that they would charge the presidential bodyguards with obstruction of justice.

“We will do everything we can to provide security for the object of our service according to laws and principles,” the Presidential Security Service said in a statement.

Public surveys showed that a majority of South Koreans wanted Yoon ousted and punished for insurrection. But his governing party, which opposed his impeachment, denounced attempts to hold him.

Yoon also has die-hard supporters — mostly among older South Koreans. Thousands of his supporters have been camped out for days on the pavement, chanting, “Let’s protect Yoon Suk Yeol!”

In a message delivered on New Year’s Day, Yoon called them “citizens who love freedom and democracy” and thanked them for braving the cold weather to show their support out on the street near his home.

“I will fight with you to the end to save this country,” Yoon said.

When the officials withdrew from Yoon’s compound, they shouted: “We have won!”

Protesters who have been clamoring for Yoon’s arrest began gathering again Friday, marching near Yoon’s residence and shouting “Arrest Yoon Suk Yeol!” They, as well as the country’s opposition parties, expressed fury over the failure to detain Yoon, calling his Presidential Security Service “accomplices” in an insurrection.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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