South Korea’s Presidential Security Service, the agency assigned to protect the president, boasts that it is “the last place to run a safe and stable country.” It is now at the heart of South Korea’s biggest political upheaval in decades, serving as the last line of defense to prevent criminal investigators from arresting President Yoon Suk Yeol on charges of treason.
Since being charged with the temporary declaration of martial law last month, Mr. Yoon is being held in the center of Seoul, in a hilly area now surrounded by bus barriers, barbed wire and presidential guards. He vowed to “fight to the end” to return to office. But the majority of South Koreans, according to the survey, want him extradited and arrested, and a court on Tuesday issued a new arrest warrant to investigators.
The only thing standing between them and Mr. Yoon’s Presidential Security Service, or PSS, blocked the first attempt to issue a warrant last Friday. When 100 criminal investigators and the police arrived at his residence, the agency’s employees passed two to one and dismissed them, questioning the legality of the document issued by the court. The two sides went back and forth during a standoff that lasted five and a half hours, before investigators abandoned efforts to arrest Mr. Yoon.
Just like the Secret Service does in the United States, the PSS protects former presidents, presidents-elect and visiting heads of state. Created in 1963 under former dictator Park Chung-hee, the PSS was once one of the most powerful government agencies, with a tough military that relied on its credibility to ward off assassination attempts. As South Korea has democratized in recent decades, it has largely retreated into the shadows. But under Mr. Yoon, began to attract negative public attention as its agents dragged protesters during public events.
Mr. Yoon appointed Kim Yong-hyun, his most trusted ally, to serve as his first security chief before being promoted to defense minister. Although South Korea is currently run by an acting president after Mr. With Yoon suspended following his dismissal, the unit vowed to protect Mr. Yoon because he is still the only elected leader.
The security department warned that there could be clashes if the investigators try to arrest Mr. Yoon. The organization includes hundreds of trained security guards and counter-terrorist experts, supported by a team of police and soldiers.
The police ordered Park Jong-joon, the head of the security division, to come forward for investigation on possible charges of obstruction of justice, an order he has not yet obeyed. They threatened to seek a warrant for his arrest if he continued to refuse the summons.
“We should not allow people to see the negative situation of conflict between government agencies,” said Mr. Park.
The people of South Korea who wanted Mr. Yoon was arrested and expressed anger at his refusal to cooperate. Park Chan-dae, the floor leader of the Democratic Party, the main opposition party, called Mr. Yoon was a coward for hiding behind his presidential bodyguards and trying to “inflame civil war and bloodshed.”
“The Presidential Security Service has become Yoon Suk Yeol’s private army,” said Jung Ji Ung, a lawyer and president of the bar association in Gyeonggi, a populous province in Seoul. By rejecting the warrant, he added, the security forces “put themselves above the law.” The security dispute has added to the state of confusion that has paralyzed South Korea since Mr. Yoon’s efforts to impose martial law. Many government agencies are investigating him for treason.
Caught in the struggle, the police and soldiers were urged by both sides to bring help. Including all the ongoing legal disputes over who can investigate who and who should follow whose orders after Mr. Yoon.
Mr. Yoon is facing two investigations: a political one, and another criminal one. The first is that of the Constitutional Court, which will begin hearings next week to decide whether to legally remove or reinstate the president. The second is an unprecedented criminal investigation, first the officials tried to arrest the current president.
The investigators want to ask Mr. Yoon to find out if he was protesting when he ordered the military to seize the National Assembly and round up his political opponents.
Mr. Yoon and his lawyers said his declaration of martial law was a formal exercise of the president’s power to control unruly opposition, which has stalled his political agenda. They have fired a number of legal challenges to those who want to arrest him.
On Wednesday, the lawyer of Mr. Yoon, Yoon Kab-keun, emphasized that the president will not accept the arrest warrant, but said the president will surrender if the court issues a legal and appropriate arrest warrant because he does not want to increase “conflict, confusion and division” in the country.
Until recently, federal prosecutors tended to investigate all politically sensitive crimes.
But his predecessor, Mr. Yoon, President Moon Jae-in, established the Corruption Investigation Office of Senior Officials, or CIO, in 2020, and took some powers to investigate prosecutors. But the role of the new agency was not clearly defined, and it had few resources. Prosecutors have arrested many key people involved in Mr. Yoon, including army generals and Mr. Kim, a former PSS commander, who was a close ally of Mr. Yoon.
The CIO, in turn, revealed that the sedition case is under his control, and has joined forces with the police to get more support in the joint investigation. But the bureau’s resources were so limited that it could only muster 20 officers in its task of arresting Mr. Yoon last Friday.
Even the 80 policemen who supported them, could not overcome the security forces, which included 200 agents and soldiers, who closed their weapons to form barriers.
Embarrassed by the shameful failure, the Bureau of Investigation and the police reunited. They have pointed out that if they try to re-arrest Mr. Yoon, they will come with other officials. Others fear a violent conflict if neither side backs down.
“We will make full preparations to achieve our goal in the second attempt,” Oh Dong-hoon, chief prosecutor of the investigative bureau, told a parliamentary hearing on Tuesday.
Some opposition lawyers are pushing for bills to disband the security service and include security information from the police.
They see it as a remnant of decades past, when South Korean military dictators became North Korean assassins, as well as internal enemies, and used the president’s security detail as personal bodyguards, appointing their most trusted allies as their chiefs. (When the military dictator Park Chung-hee was assassinated by his national intelligence chief, Kim Jae Kyu, during a drinking party in 1979, Mr. Kim first shot the agency’s chief bodyguard.)
“The Presidential Security Service is a symbol of the presidency and a legacy of a powerful past,” said Shin Jang-sik, an opposition lawmaker who helped draft one bill to disband the PSS.
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