Yoon to Appear for Warrant Hearing... 'Charges of Leading Rebellion'

President Yoon Suk-yeol is scheduled to appear at 2 p.m. on the 18th for a pre-arrest detention hearing (warrant review) at the Seoul Western District Court.

President Yoon Suk-yeol after the investigation. Photo by Yonhap News

Yoon's lawyer, Yoon Gap-geun, announced in the morning that "the president will attend the pre-arrest hearing at 2 p.m." This decision was made public after the legal team met with President Yoon at the Seoul Detention Center.

President Yoon is expected to actively refute the allegations of leading a rebellion and abuse of power claimed by the High-ranking Officials' Crime Investigation Unit (PCC).

He is accused of conspiring with former Minister of National Defense Kim Yong-hyun and others to declare martial law with the intent to disrupt the constitutional order, despite the conditions for declaring martial law not being met. He is also charged with attempting to obstruct the National Assembly's resolution to lift martial law by blocking the assembly, ordering the arrest of key figures such as Lee Jae-myung, leader of the Democratic Party, and Han Dong-hoon, former leader of the People Power Party, and attempting to seize the Central Election Commission and its servers.

Since his arrest by the PCC on the 15th, President Yoon has exercised his right to remain silent and consistently refused to appear. Considering that the arrest warrant for President Yoon was valid until 9 p.m. on the 17th, the PCC did not attempt to summon him for questioning in the afternoon and immediately requested an arrest warrant.

This is the first time an arrest warrant has been requested for a sitting president. Therefore, there is no precedent for a sitting president appearing at a warrant review hearing. Among former presidents, only Park Geun-hye appeared at a warrant review hearing in 2017. Former President Lee Myung-bak did not attend the hearing in 2018, and during the presidencies of Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo in 1995, the system did not exist. The warrant review system, which guarantees the right to face a judge before detention, was introduced in 1997.