Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials says president sought to ‘disrupt the constitutional order’.South Korea’s anticorruption agency has recommended that President Yoon Suk-yeol be charged with insurrection and abuse of power following a probe into the impeached leader’s short-lived martial law declaration.
The Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO) said on Thursday that it requested prosecutors to file the charges after finding that Yoon had suspended civil rule with “the intent to exclude state authority or disrupt the constitutional order”.
Following the CIO’s transfer of the case, the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office will have 11 days to decide whether to charge Yoon and send him to trial.
Yoon, who has been suspended from his duties since a December 14 impeachment vote by the National Assembly, was arrested at his residence in Seoul last week after refusing repeated summons to appear for questioning.
His arrest marked the first time in South Korean history that a sitting president was taken into custody.
Yoon’s lawyers have argued that the CIO, established in 2021 under Moon’s predecessor Moon Jae-in, does not have the authority to investigate the president for insurrection and that his arrest was illegal. Advertisement
Under South Korean law, insurrection is one of the few crimes for which the president does not enjoy immunity.
The offence is punishable by life imprisonment or the death penalty, though the East Asian country has a longstanding moratorium on executions.
Yoon’s political fate …