Yoon, wife to face special counsel probes
President Lee Jae-myung's Cabinet on Tuesday passed bills to open three special counsel investigations into former President Yoon Suk Yeol and his wife Kim Keon Hee.
The bills are intended to "end the insurrection" that the Lee administration and the ruling Democratic Party of Korea accuse Yoon of instigating with his short-lived martial law decree on Dec. 3, 2024.
At the second Cabinet meeting since Lee took office last week, the Democratic Party-led bills passed into law to bring together 577 prosecutors and investigators in total to investigate the former first couple. The combined size of the legal teams involved in the investigations is comparable to a district attorney's office.
With Tuesday's passage, a special counsel investigation will look into if Yoon committed either insurrection or treason by trying to impose martial law. Yoon declared martial law late in the evening of Dec. 3, only to lift it six hours later following a National Assembly resolution that opposed it.
The Democratic Party contends that Yoon attempted to provoke military action from North Korea with his hawkish policies to lay the groundwork for the declaration of martial law.
Yoon's Ministry of National Defense playing anti-Kim Jong-un regime broadcasts along the inter-Korean borders from June 2024 was one example of the former administration deliberately seeking military confrontation with North Korea, according to the Democratic Party. Before their resumption last year, the border broadcasts had been used by the South Korean military as a psychological warfare tactic in the past, before they were halted in 2018 under then-President Moon Jae-in.
The Democratic Party also claims that Yoon sent drones across the border into North Korea in October 2024, echoing Pyongyang's accusations that the South Korean military was behind the alleged drone infiltration.
Yoon allegedly attempting to instigate an armed conflict with North Korea in the run-up to his martial law decree qualifies as "treason," the Democratic Party claimed, on top of being a "rebellion against the Constitution, which is to say, insurrection."
Yoon's wife Kim is set to face a separate special counsel investigation that will scrutinize allegations she was involved in the then-ruling People Power Party's nomination of candidates for a National Assembly seat in the 2022 by-election.
Another special counsel investigation would revisit the death of a Marine in July 2023.
Cpl. Chae Su-geun, 20, died when he was swept away in moving water during a search and rescue operation to locate flood victims in a rain-swollen river in Yecheon, North Gyeongsang Province.
The Democratic Party says Yoon's presidential office tried to impede the preliminary probe into Chae's death at the time to cover up possible wrongdoing at the top.
Special counsels will be given as long as 170 days to investigate Yoon and his wife.
Yoon was removed from office on April 4 in a unanimous ruling by the Constitutional Court over the martial law debacle, leading South Korea to hold an early presidential election on June 3.
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