South Korea’s anti-graft agency recommends insurrection charges for Yoon

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.

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 is separately under consideration by the Constitutional Court, which has 180 days to decide whether to uphold his impeachment or restore his presidential authority.

During his first appearance before the nine-member court on Tuesday, Yoon denied ordering troops to forcibly remove lawmakers from the National Assembly so they would not be able to vote to overturn his brief martial law decree.

Yoon told the court that lawmakers could have gathered elsewhere to overturn his December 3 decree, which he rescinded within hours following a unanimous National Assembly vote.

Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Choi Sang-mok has served as the country’s acting president since December 27, when lawmakers impeached Yoon’s initial successor, Han Duck-soo, for refusing to immediately fill three vacancies on the Constitutional Court.