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South Korea President Yoon Is Detained for Questioning Over Martial Law

South Korea President Yoon Is Detained for Questioning Over Martial Law

President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea sounded defiant just over a year ago when the opposition-dominated National Assembly began threatening to impeach him. “​I say, ‘Try it, if you want!’” he said during a town-hall meeting.

Mr. Yoon has not only been impeached, but on Wednesday he won ​an ignominious ​place in South Korean history when he became the first sitting president to be detained in a criminal investigation.

His detention ended a weekslong ​political standoff and hand-wringing over what South Korea should do with a leader who declared martial law last month, a move that threatened decades of hard-won democracy in the country.

But Seoul’s inability to deal with the question quickly — and the fact that it had to mobilize an army of law-enforcement forces to make him surrender — ​exposed how deep the fractures are in its politics. This entrenched political polarization, combined with Mr. Yoon’s uncompromising style and his personal animus toward his political enemies, led him down a path to​ the showdown with police Wednesday at the hilltop residence where he had retreated.

Since he won his election by a razor-thin margin in 20​22, Mr. Yoon has constantly clashed with the ​majority opposition over policies, scandals involving his wife and his hostile relationship with dissiden​ts, including journalists he accused of spreading “fake news.”

His anger exploded on Dec. 3, when he declared martial law, calling his liberal enemies “anti-state forces” and the opposition-dominated National Assembly “a monster.” The law placed a ban on all political activities and put news media under military control, though the National Assembly killed his martial law decree before Mr. Yoon could enforce such moves.

​During the six hours of martial law, he ​ordered military commanders​ to break the Assembly’s doors down “with axes” or “by shooting, if necessary” and “drag out” lawmakers, according to prosecutors who ​have indicted the ​military generals on charges of helping Mr. Yoon commit insurrection​.

Even after the Assembly voted down his decree and then impeached him, ​Mr. Yoon vowed to “fight to the end.” He holed up in his hilly residence in central Seoul — behind bodyguards, rolls of razor wire and barricades of buses. Mr. Yoon repeatedly ignored summons from investigators to face questioning​ for insurrection charges.

When they visited his presidential compound on Jan. 3 to serve a court warrant to detain him, he refused to surrender, and ​his 200 presidential security officials formed human barricades to repel 100 investigators and police officers. On Wednesday, the investigators mobilized 1,000 police officers, including units specializing in targeting drug and organized crime gangs, to storm the compound​ again in overwhelming numbers.

Some carried aluminum ladders to clamber over barricades of buses that blocked the road leading to ​Mr. Yoon’s residence. His bodyguards put up no resistance after warnings from the investigators that if they did, they would be arrested on charges of obstructing justice. At the gate of his residence, investigators haggled for two hours with supporters of Mr. Yoon. The president’s lawyers suggested that if the investigators withdrew, Mr. Yoon would ​visit their headquarters with his presidential security details​ to submit himself to questioning.

But the investigators would have none of it. At 10:33 a.m., they served the warrant.

Mr. Yoon did gain some concessions: He was not handcuffed when he was taken to the investigators’ headquarters​ south of Seoul in a motorcade through busy morning traffic. He was escorted straight to a third-floor room where he faced a marathon interrogation. The investigators ​have said they had 200 pages of questions to ask, but a governing-party lawmaker who met Mr. Yoon before his detention indicated that the president would insist on his right to remain silent.

In a video message released shortly after​ he was taken away, Mr. Yoon said he agreed to submit to questioning in order to prevent a “bloody” clash between his bodyguards and the police. But he called the investigation and​ the warrant to detain him illegal.

​To many analysts, however, his fate appears to have been set.

The investigators have 48 hours to interrogate him but can then seek a separate court warrant to formally arrest him. Since ​courts have already agreed to the arrests of Mr. Yoon’s associates in his imposition of martial law​, they are likely to agree to his arrest as well, analysts said. If he is arrested, the investigators and prosecutors must indict him within 20 days.

Separately this week, the country’s Constitutional Court began deliberating whether the Assembly’s vote on Dec. 14 to impeach Mr. Yoon was legitimate and if he should be formally removed from office.

“Since people will take it for granted that courts will likely allow his arrest and uphold his impeachment, the national attention will now quickly migrate to who should become the next president,” said Park Sung-min, head of MIN Consulting, a Seoul-based political advisory company.

An election — which must take place within two months of a court ruling if it removes Mr. Yoon — could add to a deepening political tribalism in South Korea that has fueled street protests both for and against Mr. Yoon.

When conservative activists have rallied in recent weeks, they vilified Lee Jae-my​ung, the main opposition leader and presidential hopeful, as a dangerous left-wing radical. Mr. Lee has himself been fighting legal charges under Mr. Yoon that he says are politically motivated.

Conspiracy theories quickly spreading through YouTube and other social media platforms have only helped deepen the political division. A man who subscribed to such theories stabbed Mr. Lee in the neck with a knife last January.

In a lengthy statement posted on his Facebook account on Wednesday, Mr. Yoon again peddled a conspiracy theory popular among his followers, saying that his declaration of martial law was driven in part by widespread voting fraud in South Korea.

“Yoon’s detention is the first step toward restoring the constitutional order, democracy and rule of law,” said Park Chan-dae, the floor leader of the main opposition Democratic Party. “It was belated, but it also confirmed that our nation’s law enforcement and justice are still alive.”

But Mr. Yoon’s People Power Party refused to accept Mr. Yoon’s impeachment and his detention. It pushed out a party leader who supported Mr. Yoon’s impeachment and has demanded that ​a lawmaker who backed the impeachment leave the party.

“The reason they insisted on detaining the president was that they wanted to humiliate him,” Kwon Young-se​, an interim leader of the party, said on Wednesday. “They wanted to elevate their status by detaining a sitting president.”

The cutthroat rivalry among parties leaves little room for debate and compromise as the nation struggles to overcome its worst political crisis in decades. The approval ratings of Mr. Yoon’s party, which took a nosedive in the wake of his martial law, began climbing back up in the past week as polarized politics kicked in again.

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