Thousands of supporters and critics of ousted South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol brave the snow in Seoul on Sunday, a day before an arrest warrant against him expires for his failed attempt to impose early martial law. December.
In front of his residence, supporters of the former star prosecutor came in numbers to demand the annulment of his dismissal by Parliament, noted AFP journalists, despite the cold and the white coat which covered the capital during the night.
“I went through war and temperatures of -20 degrees in the snow to fight (…). This snow is nothing,” Park Young-chul told AFP, affirming that the “ war is here again.”
Mr. Yoon’s opponents are demanding his arrest, after a first unsuccessful attempt by investigators defeated on Friday by the presidential guard.
“I left my job to come and protect our country and democracy. I live two hours from here and going to the protests and then leaving again was too much,” Lee Jin-ah, 28, told AFP .
“The snow is nothing (…), we will still be there,” continues the former employee of a café, who spent the night near Yoon Suk Yeol’s home.
Investigators have until the last second on Monday (4 p.m. in Switzerland Monday) to execute the arrest warrant issued against him to force him to answer questions about his brief imposition of martial law. They had assured that the order would be implemented within this deadline.
Present at his trial?
Mr. Yoon, 64, is the subject of several investigations, including for “rebellion”, accused of having shaken the young South Korean democracy with his coup on the night of December 3 to 4, which revived the painful memory of the military dictatorship.
In Parliament surrounded by soldiers, a sufficient number of deputies managed to vote on a motion demanding the lifting of the state of exception. Under pressure from elected officials, thousands of demonstrators and constrained by the Constitution, Yoon Suk Yeol had to comply a few hours after his shock measure.
According to a prosecutor’s report consulted on Sunday by AFP, he had, before announcing his decision on television, ignored the disagreements of the then Prime Minister, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and that of Finance, Choi Sang-mok , currently interim president.
On December 14, the National Assembly passed an impeachment motion against Mr. Yoon, leading to his immediate suspension. However, he officially remains the titular president while waiting for the Constitutional Court to rule on his case by mid-June.
Yoon Suk Yeol plans to appear at his trial at the Court, “to give his point of view”, announced Sunday in a press release his lawyer, Yoon Kab-keun, while the court has at this stage fixed five sessions between January 14 and February 4.
Neither Park Geun-hye nor Roh Moo-hyun, the two other former presidents to have been involved, came to their trials.
Ms. Park was definitively dismissed and then imprisoned in 2017 while Mr. Roh was saved by the Court, subsequently serving the end of his mandate.
Not enough “authority”
A possible arrest of Mr. Yoon would be a first for a sitting South Korean head of state. However, the investigators left his home empty-handed on Friday, the presidential guards having refused to comply with their mandate.
The Senior Corruption Investigation Office (CIO), the entity centralizing the investigations, asked Choi Sang-mok on Saturday to order Mr. Yoon’s protection staff to cooperate.
“The presidential security service has violated the Constitution, effectively becoming a rebel force,” Park Chan-dae, leader of the Democratic Party, the main opposition force and majority group in the chamber, blasted in Parliament.
Yoon Suk Yeol’s legal team intends to initiate proceedings against “those who committed illegal acts”, believing that the head of the IOC, Oh Dong-woon, had tried to carry out the mandate arrest without having sufficient “authority”, according to Yoon Kab-keun.
South Korea has continued to descend into political chaos since the beginning of December, the first interim president also having been dismissed on the 27th by deputies, who accused him of obstructing the proceedings against Mr. Yoon. Choi Sang-mok has since served as the second acting president.
In this context, the head of American diplomacy Antony Blinken is expected in Seoul, notably for a meeting on Monday with his counterpart Cho Tae-yul.
This article was automatically published. Sources: ats / afp
