Yoon Suk Yeol, South Korea’s president, arrives for a hearing at the Constitutional Court of Korea in Seoul, South Korea, on Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
South Korean special prosecutors on Sunday filed a request to detain former President Yoon Suk Yeol on charges related to insurrection from when he declared martial law last year, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
“Detention request is related to allegations of abuse of power and obstruction of justice,” the statement from the special counsel of prosecutors investigating the December 3 incident said.
Yoon’s martial law decree was lifted about six hours after it was announced when lawmakers, who had been forced to scale the walls of the assembly building to make it through a ring of security forces, voted the decree down.
Yoon was summoned on Saturday for hours of questioning by the special counsel as part of the probe over the insurrection charges, according to the counsel officials.
The special prosecutors have not provided credible evidence for the charges it is seeking against Yoon, and his legal team has plans to “explain in court that the request for an arrest warrant is unreasonable,” Yoon’s lawyers said in a statement.