Members of the PSS have since been seen installing barbed wire near the gate and along the hills leading up to the building.
Police officers arrive at the gate of the presidential residence as supporters of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol stage a rally to oppose a court having issued a warrant to detain Yoon, in Seoul.Credit: AP
Yoon’s defiance in relinquishing power has exposed the legal confusion over the jurisdiction of corruption investigators, police, and prosecutors. The arrest warrant was granted by the courts to the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials, an independent government agency.
On Friday, about 150 investigators were forced to abandon their attempt to detain Yoon following a six-hour-long standoff with 200 members of the PSS which used vehicles to help barricade the president.
The corruption office initially appealed to the police on Monday to take over the arrest efforts but later reversed course after police appeared to question the legality of stepping in.
Defiant: Impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol in December.Credit: nnaadvidler
Yoon’s legal team have asserted the arrest attempt was illegal on the grounds the corruption office does not have the power to investigate insurrection offences. Police are now reportedly weighing up their next steps.
Dr Youngshik Bong, a research fellow at Yonsei University in Seoul, said the crisis was a consequence of South Korea’s very compressed transition from military dictatorship to liberal democracy in the late 1980s, which has exposed loopholes in its legal system.
“This is basically an ugly, but necessary, and possibly positive part of the growing pains for South Korean democracy. We have cut a lot of corners in order to get the success we have been enjoying until this moment,” he said.
“The fact that we do not know whether it is lawful to execute the arrest warrant for the president and which authority has jurisdiction over this case is a very rude wake-up call to all of us about how poor our legal system actually is.”
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For his part, PSS chief Park has so far refused police requests for questioning, according to local Korean media reports, and in a statement this week defended his team’s primary mission as ensuring the “absolute safety of the president”.
“To comply with the execution of an arrest warrant amidst ongoing legal disputes would be tantamount to [the PSS] abandoning its duty,” he said.
The chaos has been turbocharged by the impeachment of Yoon’s replacement, acting president Han Duck-soo after less than two weeks at the helm. The leadership baton was then handed to deputy prime minister Choi Sang-mok, who was days into the job when Jeju Air Flight 2216 crashed killing 179 people, the country’s worst aviation disaster in decades.
Meanwhile, the political divisions between the country’s conservative and liberal flanks have exploded onto the streets in mass demonstrations.
Thousands of anti-Yoon protesters, backed by unions, have taken to snow-covered streets near the presidential residence calling for his ouster. Groups of pro-Yoon supporters, also numbering in their thousands, have gathered too, waving American and South Korean flags and holding banners declaring “Stop the Steal” — echoing the slogan of MAGA supporters after Trump lost the presidential race to Biden in 2020.
But so far, unlike the January 6 storming of the US Capitol building in 2021, the protests have proceeded without descending into violence.
As for Yoon’s impeachment case, that is currently being considered by the country’s Constitutional Court which has six months to deliver its verdict on whether to uphold the impeachment and formally remove Yoon from office or reinstate him. The first hearings start next week, with Yoon vowing to “fight until the end”.
Should he survive not only arrest but impeachment, this crisis will surely take another unpredictable turn, restoring to office a deeply unpopular president who, in the eyes of many Koreans, has shredded his mandate.
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