The Constitutional Court of South Korea began formal deliberations on Tuesday to decide whether to unseat President Yoon Suk Yeol. The impeached leader stayed away, holed up in his fortified presidential compound where he is bracing himself for what his aides called a “siege attack” from up to 1,000 criminal investigators planning to detain him on insurrection charges.
Mr. Yoon has been suspended from office since he was impeached by the National Assembly on Dec. 14 for his short-lived imposition of martial law 11 days earlier. But he has refused to step down. Instead, he vowed to “fight to the end” to regain power through a trial at the Constitutional Court, and has resisted demands he submit to questioning by officials conducting a separate investigation of insurrection charges.
The ongoing efforts to bring Mr. Yoon to account for declaring military rule and his refusal to cooperate with all investigations so far has left South Korea in political limbo, sowing doubts over the resilience of its decades-old democracy.
The Constitutional Court has the sole power to decide whether the parliamentary impeachment was legitimate and whether Mr. Yoon should be formally removed or reinstated. Small but loud rival groups of citizens engaged in shouting matches across the narrow street in front of the court on Tuesday as the first hearing opened. The perimeter wall of the court was lined with flowers that Mr. Yoon’s supporters had sent.
But Mr. Yoon did not show up: His lawyers said he feared that the insurrection investigators would nab him if he left his presidential compound. The court adjourned after four minutes on Tuesday when it found Mr. Yoon absent. It said it would resume its deliberations on Thursday, when it can proceed with or without him.
The court hearing is playing second fiddle to the drama surrounding the criminal investigation. When the investigators first visited Mr. Yoon’s residence on Jan. 3 to serve a detention warrant, his bodyguards blocked their approach with cars, buses and by forming human chains. The investigators retreated, vowing to return with more officials.
Tensions around the property — and fears of a possible clash between the president’s bodyguards and the police — have deepened in the past couple weeks. Mr. Yoon’s Presidential Security Service turned the hilly compound in central Seoul into a fortress, deploying more buses and rolls of razor wire to block its gates and walls. The insurrection investigators and police have in the meantime been working out a detailed plan on how to break through the barriers and detain Mr. Yoon the next time they try to serve the warrant.
On Tuesday, Mr. Yoon’s presidential chief of staff, Chung Jin-suk, likened Mr. Yoon to a besieged leader who “remained isolated in a castle, with no one around to help him, as the sun was setting.”
“They have completed their preparations to mount their siege attack,” said Mr. Chung, a former journalist and lawmaker, referring to the police and investigators.
In the first failed attempt to detain Mr. Yoon, some 100 prosecutors, investigators and police officers visited his residence but were outnumbered two to one by presidential bodyguards and soldiers. For their second attempt, police officials said they were drawing up plans to deploy 1,000 officers, including those that specialize in busting drug and other organized crime gangs.
The investigators and police met with officials from Mr. Yoon’s Presidential Security Service on Tuesday to discuss how to resolve the standoff. But there was no immediate sign of a resolution.
Mr. Yoon’s aides are trying to keep him from facing the humiliation of becoming the first sitting president detained by his own law enforcement agencies, which would take him to their headquarters south of the city.
His lawyers have contested the legality of the court warrant to detain him. They instead proposed that the investigators question Mr. Yoon in his residence or in a neutral venue while allowing him to stand trial at the Constitutional Court and answer separate insurrection charges as a free man.
But most South Koreans want Mr. Yoon arrested and ousted, according to surveys.
Mr. Yoon’s last line of defense — the Presidential Security Service — has begun showing cracks: Its chief, Park Jong-joon, stepped down last week before presenting himself to the police for questioning on whether he committed the crime of obstructing justice when his agency blocked investigators from serving the court warrant.
On Monday, the agency said it had suspended one of its senior officials after the official met secretly with police officers. The official was accused of cooperating with the police by sharing information on the presidential compound, including its layout. But the agency said it did not punish anyone for “speaking their minds” during internal meetings, indicating that there was a fierce debate among presidential guards on whether it was right for them to stop fellow government officials from serving the warrant.
The Presidential Security Service is backed by police and military detachments.
Both the police and the military said they did not want their soldiers and police officers to be dragged into helping block Mr. Yoon’s detention.
On Monday, Lee Jae-myung, the main opposition leader, urged Deputy Prime Minister Choi Sang-mok, the country’s nonelected acting president, to stop the presidential bodyguards from blocking officials from serving the court-issued warrant. But Mr. Choi refused to take sides, urging both the investigators and presidential guards to settle their dispute peacefully, not through “violent means.”
