Ousted South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol’s bid to impose martial law was aimed at thwarting a “legislative dictatorship” by the opposition-controlled parliament, his lawyer said yesterday as Yoon became the country’s first president to stand trial in a criminal case while in office.
Yoon has been behind bars since he was arrested last month on charges of insurrection.
Criminal proceedings at Seoul’s Central District Court yesterday morning lasted just over an hour. Yoon attended the hearing, but did not speak.
Photo: AFP
Prosecutors have accused the suspended president of being the “ringleader of an insurrection.”
They argued against releasing him from the detention facility, saying Yoon could try to “influence or persuade those involved in the case.”
Addressing the court, Yoon’s lawyer Kim Hong-il in turn condemned the “illegal probe,” arguing that the “investigating body has no jurisdiction.”
“The declaration of martial law was not intended to paralyze the state,” Kim said.
Instead, it was meant to “alert the public to the national crisis caused by the legislative dictatorship of the dominant opposition party, which had crippled the administration,” he said.
“The judiciary must serve as the stabilizing force,” he told the court’s three judges, warning that he was “witnessing a reality where illegality compounds illegality.”
Separately, South Korea’s Constitutional Court is deliberating whether to formally remove Yoon from office following his impeachment by parliament in December last year.
Called to testify at that hearing was Han Duck-soo, who was also impeached as acting president following Yoon’s removal from office.
Han told the court that he had opposed Yoon’s declaration of martial law.
Han said that he and most of his fellow Cabinet members “believed it would put South Korea in serious difficulty,” and that he recalled them “being concerned and trying to dissuade it.”
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