Closing summary
It is approaching 8pm in Seoul and this blog will be closing shortly. You can keep up to date on the Guardian’s South Korea news coverage here.
A report on the latest events, written by Justin McCurry in Osaka, Raphael Rashid in Seoul and agencies, can be found here:
Here are the key developments on this story:
South Korean investigators called off their attempt to arrest impeached president Yoon Suk Yeol over his failed martial law bid on Friday after a near-six-hour standoff at his residence during which he defied their attempt to detain him. “Regarding the execution of the arrest warrant today, it was determined that the execution was effectively impossible due to the ongoing standoff,” the Corruption Investigation Office (CIO) said in a statement.
The country’s anti-corruption agency said it withdrew its investigators after the presidential security service blocked them from entering Yoon’s residence for hours due to concerns about their safety. The agency expressed “serious regret about the attitude of the suspect, who did not respond to a process by law”.
After the arrest effort was suspended, Yoon’s legal team said the CIO had no authority to investigate insurrection and it was regrettable that it had tried to execute an illegal warrant in a sensitive security area. The statement warned police against supporting the arrest effort.
The presidential office filed a criminal complaint against three broadcasters and YouTube channel owners for unauthorised filming of the presidential residence, which it said was “a secured facility directly linked to national security”.
Yoon, a former prosecutor, has defied investigators’ attempts to question him for weeks. The last time he is known to have left the residence was on 12 December, when he went to the nearby presidential office to make a televised statement to the nation, making a defiant statement that he will fight efforts to oust him.
Investigators from the country’s anti-corruption agency are weighing charges of rebellion after Yoon, apparently frustrated that his policies were blocked by an opposition-dominated parliament, declared martial law on 3 December and dispatched troops to surround the National Assembly. A Seoul court issued a warrant for Yoon’s detention on Tuesday, but enforcing it is complicated as long as he remains in his official residence.
Yoon’s lawyers, who filed a challenge to the warrant on Thursday, say it cannot be enforced at his residence due to a law that protects locations potentially linked to military secrets from search without the consent of the person in charge.
The CIO said it would discuss further action but did not immediately say whether it would make another attempt to detain Yoon. The warrant for his detention will expire on Monday.
Later on Friday, the CIO said it would ask acting president Choi Sang-mok to exercise his power to order the Presidential Security Service (PSS) to cooperate. The current warrant gives investigators only 48 hours to hold president Yoon after he is arrested.
South Korea’s Constitutional Court said on Friday it will hold first arguments on 14 January in a trial to decide whether to oust president Yoon. He is required to appear for the first arguments. The court said it has planned a second session for 16 January in case Yoon refuses to appear for the first arguments.
Supporters of impeached South Korean president Yoon are adopting “Stop the Steal” slogans popularised by US president-elect Donald Trump supporters and said they hoped the incoming president would help their embattled leader. As Yoon supporters gathered outside his residence in the pre-dawn hours of Friday in an effort to prevent his arrest, some carried signs in English saying “Stop the Steal”, a slogan Trump supporters used to question the results of the 2020 US presidential election, which he lost. Trump, who is to take office for a second term on 21 January, has not commented on Yoon’s situation and there are no clear ties between his campaign and Yoon’s backers.
With echoes of claims of election denial movements in the US, a Hankook Research poll released this week showed that 65% of Yoon’s conservative People Power Party supporters believe last April’s parliamentary elections were fraudulent, despite only 29% of the general public sharing this view.
“The immediate arrest of the insurrection ringleader is the most urgent task to overcome our country’s crisis,” Democratic party floor leader Park Chan-dae said. “The longer we delay, the more snowballing damage there will be,” he added, calling for “anyone who obstructs the execution of the arrest warrant” to be arrested immediately.
North Korea’s state media published a detailed report on the political turmoil in South Korea, including the arrest warrant issued for president Yoon, who it said “stubbornly refuses to be investigated, totally denying his crimes with sheer lies”.
US secretary of state Antony Blinken will visit South Korea for talks next week, Seoul’s foreign ministry said on Friday. Blinken will meet his counterpart, Cho Tae-yul, on Monday, Seoul’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
Updated
The current warrant gives investigators only 48 hours to hold president Yoon Suk Yeol after he is arrested. Investigators must then decide whether to request a detention warrant or release him.
Kim Seon-taek, a Korea University law professor, told Reuters that targeting the Presidential Security Service (PSS) leadership may allow the investigators to sap the service’s ability to put up resistance so they can try again to execute the warrant, which is “a rough way” to proceed.
A better way, he said, would be for acting president Choi Sang-mok to exercise his power to order the PSS to cooperate. Later on Friday, the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO) said it would ask Choi to give that order.
