Seeking to avoid arrest, the suspended president skipped a hearing on his failed martial law bid.
The first hearing in the impeachment trial of suspended South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol was postponed after he failed to appear.
The trial, which began Tuesday in the capital Seoul, will decide whether Yoon should be stripped of his presidential duties because of failed power grab in December. The hearing was delayed minutes after it began at the country’s Constitutional Court due to Yoon’s absence.
The president’s lawyers said he would not attend the hearing, saying the authorities’ continued attempts to detain him prevented him from expressing his views at the trial. Yoon was tucked away in his mansion on a hill in Seoul for weeks in an attempt to avoid arrest.
The court has 180 days from December 14 to make a decision. Yoon would be officially removed from office if at least six of the eight justices voted to impeach him.
Under South Korean law, the court must set a new date for the hearing before proceeding without his participation. The next hearing is now scheduled for Thursday.
Yoon’s lawyers said they would decide whether to appear after the interview.
Conflict in the presidential residence
The lawyers also repeated the claims that it was warrant of the investigating authorities is not valid, and that Yoon will respond to a valid detention order that has been lawfully executed.
Investigators from the Corruption Perceptions Office (CIO) have spent the past weeks trying to arrest Yoon, but have encountered resistance from presidential guards as well as supporters outside his mansion.
When the trial began, the authorities said they were preparing a second attempt to detain him.
In response, presidential chief of staff Chung Jin-suk claimed in a statement that anti-corruption agency investigators and police were trying to drag Yoon out of the mansion like a member of a “South American drug cartel.”
He suggested that the suspended president could instead be questioned at a “third location” or at his residence.
However, Yoon’s lawyers said they had no immediate plans to make the president available for questioning.
On January 3, the Presidential Security Service prevented investigators from detaining Yoon during a nearly six-hour standoff.
The CIO and the police, who are jointly investigating whether Yoon’s brief declaration of a state of emergency constituted an attempted rebellion, have vowed stronger measures to arrest him.
“They are trying to discuss how they will execute the arrest warrant in an orderly and peaceful manner,” Al Jazeera reporter Patrick Fok reported from Seoul.
“We are hearing reports that as many as 1,000 police could be involved to overwhelm the presidential security service.”
