For more than a month, South Korea’s president Yoon Suk-yeol had been holed up inside his official residence, surrounded by his bodyguards, in a fortified compound in Seoul. The first attempt to arrest Yoon, on allegations of insurrection following his short-lived declaration of martial law in December, had failed. After a nearly six-hour stand-off with the presidential security service on 3 January, the police officers and criminal investigators attempting to detain Yoon were forced to retreat.
But they returned before dawn on the morning of 15 January, using ladders to scale the barricades and enter the compound to detain Yoon. A large crowd of the president’s supporters, including dozens of members of the ruling People Power Party, attempted to block the arrest, but this time the president’s security service put up no meaningful resistance, according to investigators. As he was driven away for questioning, Yoon’s aides released a pre-recorded video address insisting that the arrest warrant was “illegal” but that he had decided to comply in order to prevent “violent incidents”.
This is the first time in the country’s history that a sitting president has been detained. Yoon was impeached by parliament and suspended from his duties on 14 December, but not yet removed from office as South Korea’s constitutional court must decide whether to uphold the impeachment. If Yoon’s impeachment is confirmed by the court, a new presidential election must be held within 60 days, which would likely bring the opposition Democratic Party to power.
Yoon, meanwhile, faces a parallel criminal investigation into his decision to declare martial law on 3 December. He has claimed the decision was within his legal powers as president in response to the opposition-controlled parliament’s repeated efforts to thwart his administration. That investigation is being led by the country’s corruption investigation office for high-ranking officials, which is pursuing possible charges of insurrection, among other alleged crimes, against the president, which carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment or even the death penalty (the latter is unlikely to be applied in Yoon’s case). This is the case on which he has now been detained for questioning. Yoon can be held for 48 hours before investigators must apply for a formal arrest warrant to continue holding him.
Yoon, a former top prosecutor who led the impeachment case against the then-president Park Geun-hye in 2017, has given every indication he intends to contest the charges, vowing to “fight to the end” to retain the presidency and calling his supporters out onto the streets. Thousands have camped outside his residence despite the bitter cold in recent days, many carrying signs inspired by Donald Trump’s efforts to contest the 2020 election that read: “Stop the steal”. In his pre-recorded statement on 15 January, Yoon claimed that “the rule of law in this country has collapsed completely”, stoking fears of confrontation – perhaps even violent clashes – between his diehard, conservative supporters and the liberal opposition in the weeks and months ahead.
There is no good time for South Korea to be without a functioning government, but the current crisis comes at a particularly fraught moment. The country is now confronting an emboldened North Korea – whose soldiers are fighting alongside Russia against Ukraine – and the imminent return of Donald Trump, who is threatening to upend global trade. The scale of these challenges demands sound political leadership, but the reality in this polarised and increasingly divided country is more likely to be continued paralysis as Yoon insists that he is the victim, not the instigator of South Korea’s political crisis. Yoon’s detention indicates the end of the immediate stand-off over his liberty, but the beginning of a much bigger battle over his fate and the country’s political future.
[See also: The myth of the liberal international order]
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