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Shades of Jan 6 -- the Saga of Impeached SK Pres Yoon just took a New and More Dangerous Turn [1]

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Date: 2025-01-19

After reporting on the increasingly bizarre political turmoil afflicting South Korea over the past six weeks in the wake of now-impeached president Yoon Suk-yeol’s failed attempt at an auto-golpe via martial law, I thought things were actually getting wrapped up in my last update on Tuesday when Yoon was finally arrested by the police on their second try at his fortified compound. Was I ever wrong about that!

When Yoon was initially detained for questioning on Wednesday (SK time), police only had 48 hours in which to decide whether to seek a formal arrest warrant on insurrection charges. Since Yoon refused to answer any questions about his martial law declaration back on Dec 3, or any of his actions since then, the police went to court on Friday to seek that formal arrest warrant that would allow them to hold him for an additional 20 days as they continued to gather evidence.

Continuing the story from Reuters:

After a 5-hour hearing on Saturday, which Yoon attended, the Seoul Western District Court opted to grant the investigators' request due to "concern that the suspect may destroy evidence," the court said in a statement.

The court ruling was handed down in the dead of night at 3:00 am Sunday, but by then many thousands of Yoon’s most ardent supporters had already gathered at the courthouse, despite the arctic winter temperatures, and the ruling triggered a riot reminiscent of our own Jan 6 insurrection — with those protesters overwhelming police barricades and actually breaking into the courthouse itself:

Footage showed protesters blasting fire extinguishers at lines of police guarding the front entrance, before they flooded inside, destroying office equipment and furniture. Police, who restored order a few hours later, said they had so far arrested 46 protesters. "We will track down till the end more of those who committed illegal acts or instigated and assisted," the Seoul Metropolitan Police said in a statement. There were around 40 minor injuries sustained during the chaos but no serious injuries reported, an emergency responder near the court said. … "President Yoon Suk Yeol and our legal team will never give up," lawyers representing Yoon, who have called the criminal probe invalid, said in a statement. "We will do our best in all future judicial procedures to correct the wrong," the lawyers said, adding that the violence at the court was an "unfortunate" incident. Yoon's conservative People Power Party called the court's decision a "great pity". "There's a question whether repercussions of detaining a sitting president were sufficiently considered," the party said in a statement. But the main opposition Democratic Party called the court's approval on the warrant a "cornerstone" for rebuilding order and said that "riots" by "far-right" groups would only deepen the national crisis.

Perhaps even more disturbing than the riots themselves is the apparent volatility of public opinion in South Korea (once again, this seems all too similar to what we’ve already seen in the US):

Support for the PPP [Yoon’s ultra-conservative political party] collapsed after his martial law declaration, which he rescinded hours later in the face of a unanimous vote in parliament rejecting it. Lawmakers impeached Yoon on Dec. 14, suspending his presidential powers. But in the turmoil since - in which the opposition-majority parliament also impeached his first replacement and investigators botched an initial attempt to arrest Yoon - the PPP's support has sharply rebounded. His party has edged ahead of the opposition Democratic Party in support - 39% to 36% - for the first time since August, a Gallup Korea poll showed on Friday. … His lawyers have argued the arrest is illegal because the warrant was issued in the wrong jurisdiction and the investigating team had no mandate for their probe. Insurrection, the crime that Yoon may be charged with, is one of the few that a South Korean president does not have immunity from and is technically punishable by death. South Korea, however, has not executed anyone in nearly 30 years. Separate to the criminal probe that sparked Sunday's chaos, the Constitutional Court is deliberating over whether to uphold the impeachment and permanently remove him or restore his powers.

Hopefully the Constitutional Court will do its duty in the next few weeks and permanently remove Yoon from the presidency, given that the evidence against him is absolutely overwhelming, but now it seems as if even that may not be enough to get his most cultish followers to stand down. And of course there are also the awful visuals of Yoon’s supporters waving their US flags as a kind of signal to the incoming Trump administration to try and rescue their “hero” from the absolute mess he’s made of things.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/1/19/2297708/-Shades-of-Jan-6-the-Saga-of-Impeached-SK-Pres-Yoon-just-took-a-New-and-More-Dangerous-Turn?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

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