Impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol was arrested yesterday over his failed martial law bid, ending a weeks-long standoff with authorities and becoming the first president to be detained in the nation’s history.
Yoon, who faces charges of insurrection over his short-lived effort to impose martial law last month, said he would comply with investigators to avoid “bloodshed.”
A former prosecutor who led the conservative People Power Party (PPP) to election victory in 2022, Yoon could face the death penalty or life in jail if found guilty of insurrection.
Photo: Bloomberg
He had sought to evade arrest for weeks by remaining in his residential compound, protected by members of the Presidential Security Service who had remained loyal to him.
His guards had installed barbed wire and barricades at the residence, turning it into what the opposition called a “fortress.”
Yoon, who had vowed to “fight to the end,” managed to thwart a first arrest attempt on Jan. 3 following a tense hours-long impasse between the guards and anti-graft investigators working with police.
However, before dawn yesterday, hundreds of police officers and investigators from the South Korean Corruption Investigation Office (CIO) again surrounded the residence, some scaling perimeter walls and hiking up back trails to reach the main building.
After a standoff of about five hours, authorities announced Yoon had been arrested and the impeached leader released a pre-recorded video message.
“I decided to respond to the Corruption Investigation Office,” Yoon said in the message, adding that he did not accept the legality of the investigation, but was complying “to prevent any unfortunate bloodshed.”
Yoon left his residence in a convoy and was taken to the offices of the CIO.
Investigators began questioning Yoon shortly after his arrest, but they said he had exercised “his right to remain silent.”
He refused to be filmed during questioning, a CIO official told reporters, adding that Yoon would spend the night at a detention center.
In a later Facebook post that Yoon said he wrote while holed up in his residence, he repeated election fraud claims and spoke of “hostile” nations attacking the country, alluding to North Korea.
Yoon shocked the nation late on Dec. 3 last year when he declared martial law, claiming he needed to safeguard South Korea “from the threats posed by North Korea’s communist forces and eliminate anti-state elements.”
He deployed troops to parliament, but lawmakers defied them and voted against martial law. Yoon revoked martial law after just six hours. Yoon can be held for up to 48 hours following yesterday’s arrest. Investigators would need to apply for another arrest warrant to keep him in custody.
BUILDUP: US General Dan Caine said Chinese military maneuvers are not routine exercises, but instead are ‘rehearsals for a forced unification’ with Taiwan China poses an increasingly aggressive threat to the US and deterring Beijing is the Pentagon’s top regional priority amid its rapid military buildup and invasion drills near Taiwan, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday. “Our pacing threat is communist China,” Hegseth told the US House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense during an oversight hearing with US General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Beijing is preparing for war in the Indo-Pacific as part of its broader strategy to dominate that region and then the world,” Hegseth said, adding that if it succeeds, it could derail
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CROSS-STRAIT: The MAC said it barred the Chinese officials from attending an event, because they failed to provide guarantees that Taiwan would be treated with respect The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday night defended its decision to bar Chinese officials and tourism representatives from attending a tourism event in Taipei next month, citing the unsafe conditions for Taiwanese in China. The Taipei International Summer Travel Expo, organized by the Taiwan Tourism Exchange Association, is to run from July 18 to 21. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Friday said that representatives from China’s travel industry were excluded from the expo. The Democratic Progressive Party government is obstructing cross-strait tourism exchange in a vain attempt to ignore the mainstream support for peaceful development
ELITE UNIT: President William Lai yesterday praised the National Police Agency’s Special Operations Group after watching it go through assault training and hostage rescue drills The US Navy regularly conducts global war games to develop deterrence strategies against a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, aimed at making the nation “a very difficult target to take,” US Acting Chief of Naval Operations James Kilby said on Wednesday. Testifying before the US House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, Kilby said the navy has studied the issue extensively, including routine simulations at the Naval War College. The navy is focused on five key areas: long-range strike capabilities; countering China’s command, control, communications, computers, cyber, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting; terminal ship defense; contested logistics; and nontraditional maritime denial tactics, Kilby
RSS