The rejection of an arrest warrant for South Korea’s impeached president Yoon Suk-yeol’s top official by a court in Seoul has delivered a major setback to prosecutors investigating Yoon’s martial law fiasco, observers said.
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Former prime minister Han Duck-soo avoided pre-trial detention after the Seoul Central District Court late on Wednesday dismissed a request from Special Prosecutor Cho Eun-seok’s team to place him in custody.
Cho’s team, which is investigating Yoon’s short-lived December 3 martial law decree, sought Han’s arrest last week. The veteran administrator faces charges of assisting Yoon in summoning cabinet ministers to lend procedural legitimacy to the decree.
He is also accused of perjury for testifying before the Constitutional Court and National Assembly that he had been unaware of the plan in advance. Investigators say he lied, citing surveillance footage of him reading the written decree before Yoon’s proclamation.
Han has admitted the contradiction but insisted he called in ministers only to “dissuade” Yoon from going ahead, not to legitimise the move.
Prosecutors further suspect Han of drafting and later discarding a revised version of the decree to fix legal flaws – an act amounting to the destruction of evidence.