Impeached South Korean leader Yoon Suk Yeol was arrested on Wednesday over his failed martial law bid, ending a weeks-long standoff with authorities and becoming the first sitting 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. He had sought to evade arrest for weeks by remaining in his residential compound, protected by members of the Presidential Security Service (PSS) 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 January 3 following a tense hours-long impasse between the guards and anti-graft investigators working with police. But before dawn on Wednesday, investigators presented the fresh warrant to Yoon’s guards, then had to bypass bus barricades and cut barbed wire to get inside the compound, a CIO official told reporters. Hundreds of police officers and investigators from the Corruption Investigation Office 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”.
Shortly after he was taken to the CIO offices in a convoy, investigators began questioning Yoon but they said later he exercised “his right to remain silent”. He refused to be filmed during questioning, a CIO official told reporters, before Yoon was transferred to a detention centre for the night. Outside the CIO offices, a man set himself on fire, a local fire department official told AFP. Local media reported that he died in hospital. In a Facebook post published after he was detained — which Yoon said he wrote while holed up in his residence — the suspended leader repeated election fraud claims and spoke of “hostile” nations attacking the country, alluding to North Korea.
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