How bodyguards keep South Korean President Yoon from detention

South Korea’s Presidential Security Service, an agency assigned to protect the president, boasts of being “the last bastion for a secure and stable state administration.” Now he is at the heart of South Korea’s biggest political turmoil in decades, as a final line of defense to prevent criminal investigators from arresting President Yoon Suk Yeol on charges of rebellion.

Since his impeachment above a short-lived declaration of martial law Last month, Mr. Yoon was held in central Seoul, in a hilltop compound that is now surrounded by bus barricades, barbed wire and presidential bodyguards. He vowed to “fight to the end” to return to office. But the majority of South Koreans, according to the survey, want him removed and arrested, and a court on Tuesday gave investigators a new warrant to arrest him.

The only thing standing between them and Mr. Yoon is the Presidential Security Service, or PSS, which blocked the first attempt to serve the warrant last Friday. When 100 criminal investigators and police officers showed up at his residence, agency personnel outnumbered them two to one and kept them outside, questioning the legality of the document issued by the court. The two sides went back and forth during a five-and-a-half-hour standoff, before investigators abandoned efforts to detain Mr. Yoon.

Like the Secret Service in the United States, the PSS protects sitting and former presidents, presidents-elect and visiting heads of state. Created in 1963 under former dictator Park Chung-hee, the PSS was once one of the government’s most powerful agencies, with military strongmen relying on their loyalty to survive. assassination attempts. As South Korea has democratized in recent decades, it has largely retreated into the shadows. But under Mr. Yoon, it began to attract unwelcome attention from the public as its agents.dragged the protesters during public events.

Mr. Yoon appointed Kim Yong-hyun, his staunchest ally, to serve as his first security service chief before promoting him to defense minister. Although South Korea is currently led by a sitting president after Mr. Yoon was suspended from office following his impeachment, the service has vowed to defend Mr. Yoon as he remains the sole leader elected

The security service warned that there could be a clash if investigators try again to arrest Mr. Yoon. The agency includes hundreds of trained guards and anti-terrorist specialists, who are supported by detachments from the police and the military.

Police ordered Park Jong-joon, the head of the security service, to appear for questioning on potential charges of obstruction of justice, an order he has so far ignored. They threatened to seek a warrant for his arrest if he continued to defy the subpoena.

“We should not let people see the unfortunate scene of government agency clashes,” Mr. Park said.

The South Koreans who wanted to arrest Mr. Yoon expressed outrage at his refusal to cooperate. Park Chan-dae, the leader of the main opposition Democratic Party, called Mr. Yoon a coward for hiding behind his presidential guards and trying to “incite civil war and bloodshed.”

“The president’s security service has turned into a private militia for Yoon Suk Yeol,” said Jung Ji Ung, a lawyer and president of the bar association in Gyeonggi, the populous province that surrounds Seoul. By rejecting the warrant issued by the court, he added, the security service “placed itself above the judiciary”. The security spat has added to the state of confusion that has paralyzed South Korea since Mr. Yoon’s attempt to impose martial law. Various government agencies investigated him on charges of sedition.

Involved in the fight are the police and the army, who have been called by both sides to provide help. Compounding all are ongoing legal disputes over who can investigate who and who must follow his orders following Mr. Yoon’s impeachment.

Mr. Yoon conducts a two-track investigation: one political and the other criminal. The first is from the Constitutional Court, which will begin hearings next week to decide whether to formally remove or reinstate the president. The second is an unprecedented criminal investigation, the first time officials have tried to arrest a president who is still in office.

Investigators want to question Mr. Yoon to determine whether he committed insurrection when he ordered troops to take over the National Assembly and round up his political opponents.

Mr. Yoon and his lawyers said his declaration of martial law was a legitimate use of presidential power to tame an unruly opposition, which has impeded his political agenda. They have fired a barrage of legal challenges against those trying to arrest him.

On Wednesday, Mr. Yoon’s lawyer, Yoon Kab-keun, argued that the president would not accept an arrest warrant, but said the president would surrender if a court issued a formal and proper arrest warrant because he did not want to highlight “conflict, confusion and division” in the country.

Until recently, government prosecutors had generally investigated all politically sensitive criminal cases.

But Mr. Yoon’s liberal predecessor, President Moon Jae-in, created the Corruption Investigation Office for High-Ranking Officials, or CIO, in 2020 and stripped some of prosecutors’ investigative powers. But the new agency’s role has never been clearly defined, and it has fewer resources. Prosecutors have arrested several key figures involved in Mr. Yoon’s martial law, including army generals and Mr. Kim, the former PSS commander, who was a close associate in Mr. Yoon’s martial decree.

The IOC, which has maintained that the case of insurrection is under its jurisdiction, has partnered with the police for additional support in a joint investigation. But the office’s resources were so limited that it could mobilize only 20 officers in its operation to arrest Mr. Yoon last Friday.

Even with 80 policemen supporting him, he was unable to pass the security service, which mobilized 200 agents and soldiers, who closed their weapons to form barricades.

Stung by the embarrassing failure, the investigation office and the police team up. They indicated that if he tries to arrest Mr. Yoon again, they will bring more officers. Some fear a violent confrontation if neither side backs down.

“We will make thorough preparations to achieve our goal in the second attempt,” Oh Dong-hoon, the chief prosecutor of the investigation office, told a parliamentary hearing on Tuesday.

Some opposition lawmakers are pushing bills to dissolve the security service and replace it with a security detail from the police.

They see it as a relic of decades ago, when South Korea’s military dictators feared it North Korean assassinsand even internal enemies, and he used the presidential security detail as personal bodyguards, appointing his most trusted allies as his leaders. (When military dictator Park Chung-hee was assassinated by his head of national intelligence, Kim Jae Kyuduring a drinking party in 1979, Mr. Kim first shot Mr. Park’s chief bodyguard, Cha Chi Chol, whose influence eclipsed that of his spy agency.)

“The Presidential Security Service is a symbol of the imperial presidency and a legacy of our authoritarian past,” said Shin Jang-sik, an opposition lawmaker who helped draft a bill to dissolve the PSS. We need to stop acting above the law and act as an agency of absolute power.”