Legal representatives of Yoon Suk Yeol said Thursday that the former South Korean president was injured by what they assess as an "illegal" bid to enforce an arrest warrant for him regarding the ongoing criminal investigation into his wife Kim Keon Hee.
The Ministry of Justice, however, denied the claim and said he did not sustain injuries as the result of a forceful attempt to take him into custody.
"After the special counsel attempt to forcibly take him in, ex-President Yoon's side claimed an injury on the shoulder. A medical checkup revealed that he did not have particular medical issues," the ministry said in a statement Thursday afternoon.
Hours after the prosecution's second attempt to detain Yoon was thwarted Thursday morning, Yoon's lawyers said at a press conference that 10 officials of the special counsel team tried to forcibly get him into a car by lifting the chair that he was sitting on. They say that Yoon fell on the floor during the process and was injured.
"There have been several cases in which a suspect, against whom an arrest warrant had been issued, refuses investigation, but there had not been one case in which (the enforcement of warrant) was conducted via physically dragging a person," the lawyers said in a press conference in front of the Seoul High Court.
Yoon's side has maintained that the attempt to forcibly detain him was illegal, even though the court has issued a warrant for his official arrest. They claimed it was a deliberate attempt by the prosecution to humiliate the former leader.
The former South Korean president has been refusing to cooperate with the ongoing criminal investigation, and the special counsel team said Thursday it had decided not to arrest Yoon due to adamant resistance from the suspect. It was the second failed attempt to arrest Yoon by the special counsel team looking into Kim.
Yoon has been held at the Seoul Detention Center in relation to the ongoing investigation of the Dec. 3, 2024, imposition of martial law for the last month. He was impeached and removed as president and faces charges of insurrection and power abuse. He has been refusing to comply with the related probe and trials since being detained last month.
Yoon has been summoned by the prosecution to give testimony related to accusations related to the Kim Keon Hee case, including accusations that he received illegal help in his campaign from a local pollster in exchange for helping a former member of his People Power Party secure a nomination in the parliamentary election.
Due to Yoon's repeated refusal to cooperate with the ongoing investigation concerning his wife, officials undertook measures to forcibly bring him into custody. A 2013 Supreme Court precedent shows that suspects who refuse orders to cooperate with an investigation can be forcibly taken in for the probe.
But footnotes attached to the Criminal Procedure Act published in 2022 state that if the suspect is in a state of undress for the purpose of refusing an investigation, he or she cannot be forced into custody. This is widely presumed to be the reason Yoon was lying on the floor in only his underwear as he refused to comply with officers trying to take him into custody.
minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com
