South Korea’s anti-graft agency recommends rebellion charges against Yoon Politics News


The Office on Corruption of Senior Officials said the president was trying to “undermine the constitutional order.”

South Korea’s anti-corruption agency has recommended charging President Yoon Seok-yeol with rebellion and abuse of power following an investigation into the impeached leader’s brief martial law period.

The Office of the Corruption Investigation of Senior Officials (CIO) said on Thursday it asked prosecutors to bring charges after finding that Yoon Eun-hye suspended civil rule “with the intention of excluding state power or undermining the constitutional order.”

After the CIO hands over the case, the Seoul Central District Prosecutor’s Office will have 11 days to decide whether to charge Yoon and send him to trial.

Yoon, who has been suspended since the National Assembly’s impeachment vote on Dec. 14, was arrested at his residence in Seoul last week after refusing multiple summonses to appear for questioning.

His arrest marks the first time in South Korea’s history that a sitting president has been detained.

Yoon’s lawyers argued that the chief information officer created by Moon’s predecessor in 2021 had no authority to investigate the president’s insurgency and that his arrest was illegal.

Under South Korean law, rebellion is one of the few crimes for which the president does not enjoy immunity.

The crime is punishable by life imprisonment or death, despite a long-standing moratorium on executions in the East Asian country.

Yoon’s political fate is being reviewed separately by the Constitutional Court, which has 180 days to decide whether to uphold his impeachment or restore his presidential powers.

During his first appearance in the nine-member court on Tuesday, Yoon denies ordering military to forcibly remove lawmakers from Congress So they could not vote to overturn his brief martial law.

Yoon told the court that lawmakers could gather elsewhere to overturn his Dec. 3 decree, which he repealed within hours of the National Assembly’s unanimous vote.

Finance Minister and Vice Prime Minister Choi Sang-mok has been the country’s acting president since Dec. 27, when lawmakers impeached Yoon Eun-hye’s initial successor, Han Deok-soo, for refusing to immediately fill three vacancies in the Constitutional Court.



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