A deposed president holed up in his residence and resisting arrest, hundreds of his supporters gathered in front, a tense face-to-face between security services: South Korea is experiencing a new episode of incredible chaos on Friday.
Deposed on December 14, President Yoon Suk Yeol is cloistered in his house in the heights of the chic Hannam district in Seoul.
Since an arrest warrant was issued against him on December 31 for his failed declaration of martial law on December 3, hundreds of his supporters have gathered in the surrounding area, saying they are ready to fight to defend him.
Among them, well-known far-right YouTubers and evangelical Christian preachers, who are among the last unconditional supporters of Mr. Yoon from whom the traditional right has mostly distanced itself.
“Yoon Suk Yeol! Yoon Suk yeol!” they chant, waving red light sticks and South Korean and American flags.
– “Risk our lives” –
“We are gathered here today, ready to risk our lives,” Lee Hye-sook, 57, told AFP, who accuses the opposition of “trying to transform our country into a socialist state similar to Korea of the North”.
Some spent the night there, sometimes holding prayers for Mr. Yoon.
“It’s a fight against anti-state forces. We are facing a situation where our country can preserve liberal democracy or lose it,” said Choi Sung-hwan, 47, who arrived there Thursday evening.
“We must fight to the end. It’s not just about protecting the president, it’s about protecting liberal democracy,” he adds.
A large police force supervises these demonstrators, after clashes the previous evening between supporters and detractors of Mr. Yoon.
On Friday around 8:00 a.m. (Thursday 11:00 p.m. GMT), a team from the anti-corruption department which is centralizing the investigation into “rebellion” against Mr. Yoon entered the presidential residence to try to arrest the deposed president, who had previously ignored three summons to appear. to be questioned.
Arriving aboard five cars, whose journey was followed live since dawn by South Korean television, this team was apparently blocked for a long time by a minibus parked across the entrance to M’s house. Yoon.
She finally managed to enter the residence, but still did not come out more than five hours later.
Nothing is visible to the journalists gathered outside. But according to South Korean media, a tense face-to-face is underway between the police officers who came to arrest Mr. Yoon and the president’s bodyguards.
In a letter to his supporters, Yoon Suk Yeol promised Wednesday to “fight until the end.”
The deposed president’s team of lawyers arrived at the residence in the morning. One of them, Seok Dong-hyeon, wrote on Facebook that he was “convinced that they (investigators) will fail to execute the arrest warrant today.”
Investigators have until Monday to execute the arrest warrant issued by a Seoul court against Mr. Yoon, which expires after seven days.
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