By Jack Kim
SEOUL (Reuters) – Yoon Suk Yeol became the first incumbent South Korean president to be arrested when he finally backed down on Wednesday in a weeks-long standoff with authorities investigating him over alleged insurrection. A tough political survivor who became increasingly isolated halfway through his five-year term, Yoon, 64, has been dogged by personal scandals, an unyielding opposition and rifts within his own party.
His legal peril stands in contrast to his storied career before politics as a top prosecutor, which launched him into the public eye and sparked much of the support that lead to his victory in the 2022 presidential election, his first elected office.
Since narrowly winning that election, Yoon had become embittered by continual battles that have drawn out a recklessness that a former rival said is his defining trait.
By the time Yoon briefly imposed martial law on Dec. 3 in a move that stunned South Koreans, he was badly bruised politically. He was suspended from his duties after being impeached by parliament on Dec. 14 for his martial law attempt.
Yoon’s political fate is in the hands of the Constitutional Court as his legal perils mount.
He faces multiple criminal investigations for insurrection – the only charge that South Korean presidents are not immune from – including one lead by the Corruption Investigation Office for High-Ranking Officials (CIO).
Yoon had used his refusal to comply with what he called the CIO’s illegal arrest warrant to rally supporters in the face of snowballing legal and political troubles.
Isolated in his fortified residence in downtown Seoul, Yoon and his Presidential Security Service played a high-stakes game of chicken with authorities who tried to arrest him for two weeks before he finally agreed to appear for questioning.
In a message released as he was being arrested, Yoon said he was not acknowledging the illegal process, but was submitting to avoid bloodshed.
Yoon had earlier vowed to “fight until the end” and called on followers to help him save the country from “anti-state forces”.
SCANDALS, THREATS OF PROSECUTION, ‘AMERICAN PIE’
The past year of Yoon’s presidency has been overshadowed by a scandal involving his wife, who was accused of inappropriately accepting a pricey Christian Dior handbag as a gift.
Yoon apologised after the scandal was blamed as a major reason for a crushing parliamentary election defeat the PPP suffered in April. But he continued to reject calls for a probe into the scandal and into an allegation of stock price manipulation involving his wife and her mother.
The prosecutors office that investigated the allegations decided not to press charges against the first lady.
Yoon’s struggles at home have overshadowed the relative success he has had on the international stage.
His bold push to reverse a decades-long diplomatic row with neighbouring Japan and join Tokyo in a three-way security cooperation with the United States are widely seen as his signature foreign policy achievement.
Yoon’s ability to bond on a personal level, seen as the trait that gave him his early success, was on full display at a White House event in 2023, when he took the stage and belted out the 1970s pop hit “American Pie” for an astounded President Joe Biden and a delighted crowd.
SHAMANS, HIGH SCHOOL BUDDIES
Born into an affluent family in Seoul, Yoon initially excelled at school. He entered the elite Seoul National University to study law, but a penchant for partying led him to repeatedly fail the bar exam before passing on the ninth try.
Yoon shot to national fame in 2016 when, as the chief investigator probing then-President Park Geun-hye for corruption, he was asked if he was out for revenge and responded that prosecutors were not gangsters.
Three years earlier, Park suspended Yoon, then fired him from a team investigating a high-profile case against the nation’s spy agency. That move was widely considered punishment for challenging her authority.
The role he played in jailing Park and his dramatic comeback as head of the powerful Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office marked the start of a dizzying rise to power.
Two years later, he became South Korea’s prosecutor general, spearheading a corruption probe of a close ally to the next president, Moon Jae-in. That made him a darling of conservatives frustrated with Moon’s liberal policies, setting Yoon up to be a candidate for the presidency in 2022.
But his presidency got off to a rocky start when he pushed ahead with moving the presidential office out of the Blue House compound to a new site, sparking questions whether it was because of a feng shui belief that the old presidential compound was cursed. Yoon denied any involvement by him or his wife with a shaman.
When Yoon refused to fire top officials after a 2022 Halloween crowd crush killed 159 people, he was accused of protecting his “yes men”. One was Safety Minister Lee Sang-min, a fellow graduate of Yoon’s high school.
Another alumnus of the Choongam High School in Seoul was Kim Yong-hyun, the man who spearheaded the presidential office move, became the presidential security service chief and then was appointed defence minister in September.
Kim was one of the two people who recommended that Yoon declare martial law, a senior military official said. Lee was the other.
(Reporting by Jack Kim; Additional reporting by Josh Smith; Editing by Michael Perry)
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