South Korean anti-corruption agency receives new court warrant to detain impeached President Yoon

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South Korean anti-corruption agency receives new court warrant to detain impeached President Yoon

2025-01-07 19:43 Last Updated At：19:50

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s anti-corruption agency said it received a new court warrant on Tuesday to detain impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol after its previous attempt was blocked by the presidential security service last week.

The Corruption Investigation Office for High-Ranking Officials, which plans to question the embattled president on rebellion allegations over his short-lived martial law decree on Dec. 3, didn’t immediately confirm how long the warrant would remain valid.

The agency’s chief prosecutor, Oh Dong-woon, refused to answer when asked by lawmakers when the warrant would expire, saying such information is sensitive as the agency and police contemplate ways to execute it.

Detention warrants typically last seven days but can be extended to around 10 days. Oh didn’t say when investigators planned to make their next attempt to detain Yoon.

The Seoul Western District Court last week had initially issued a warrant to detain Yoon and a separate warrant to search his residence after he repeatedly defied authorities by refusing to appear for questioning.

About 150 anti-corruption agency investigators and police officers attempted to detain Yoon on Friday but retreated from his residence in Seoul after a tense standoff with the presidential security service that lasted more than five hours. The investigators did not make another attempt to detain Yoon and the previous court warrants expired after a week on Monday.

If investigators manage to detain Yoon, they will likely ask a court for permission to make a formal arrest. Otherwise, he will be released after 48 hours.

The anti-corruption agency and police have pledged to make a more forceful effort to detain Yoon, which could be a complicated process as long as he remains in his official residence.

The anti-corruption agency is leading a joint investigation with the police and military into Yoon’s brief power grab, which included declaring martial law and dispatching troops to surround the National Assembly. Lawmakers who managed to get past the blockade voted to lift martial law hours later.

Yoon’s presidential powers were suspended after the opposition-dominated Assembly voted to impeach him on Dec. 14, accusing him of rebellion. The Constitutional Court has started deliberations on whether to formally remove Yoon from office or reinstate him.

Members of the presidential security staff were seen installing barbed wire near the gate and along the hills leading up to the presidential compound over the weekend.

Oh confirmed to lawmakers that the agency was debating with police on whether to arrest members of the presidential security staff if they forcefully obstruct efforts to detain Yoon. Police have said they are considering “all available options” to bring Yoon into custody and haven't publicly ruled out the possibility of deploying SWAT teams, although it’s unclear whether investigators would risk escalating a confrontation with presidential security forces, who are also armed.

Park Jong-joon, chief of the presidential security service, has hit back against criticism that it has become Yoon’s private army, saying it has legal obligations to protect the incumbent president. He and his deputy have so far defied summonses by police, who planned to question them over the suspected obstruction of official duty following Friday’s events.

In a parliament hearing Tuesday, Oh criticized the country’s acting leader, Deputy Prime Minister Choi Sang-mok, for instructing police to oblige with the presidential security service’s request to deploy personnel to Yoon’s residence to beef up security ahead of Friday’s detention attempt. The police did not carry out Choi’s instruction, and Oh said the agency was reviewing whether Choi’s actions constituted an obstruction of official duty.

The agency has repeatedly called for Choi to instruct the presidential security service to comply with the execution of the detention warrant against Yoon. Choi hasn't commented.

Yoon’s lawyers argued the detention and search warrants against the president cannot be enforced at his residence due to a law that protects locations potentially linked to military secrets from search without the consent of the person in charge — which would be Yoon. They also argue the anti-corruption office lacks the legal authority to investigate rebellion charges and delegate police to detain Yoon.

Yoon’s lawyers on Monday filed complaints with public prosecutors against Oh and six other anti-corruption and police officers over Friday’s detention attempt, which they claim was illegal. The lawyers also filed complaints against the country’s acting national police chief, the acting defense minister and two Seoul police officials for ignoring the presidential security service’s request to provide additional forces to block Yoon's detention attempt.

Los Angeles residents flee wildfire as fierce winds gain strength

2025-01-08 07:47 Last Updated At：07:51

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Firefighters scrambled to corral a fast-moving wildfire in the Los Angeles hillsides dotted with celebrity homes as a fierce windstorm hit Southern California on Tuesday, fanning the blaze seen for miles as scores of residents abandoned their cars and fled on foot to safety with roads blocked.

One resident described seeing people crying and screaming as they ran away carrying their children and pets.

Forecasters warned the worst may be yet to come with the windstorm predicted to last for days, producing isolated gusts that could top 100 mph (160 kph) in mountains and foothills — including in areas that haven't seen substantial rain in months. Roughly half a million utility customers were at risk of having their power shut off to reduce the risk of equipment sparking blazes.

In the Pacific Palisades neighborhood in western Los Angeles, a fire swiftly consumed nearly 2 square miles (just over 5 square kilometers) of land, sending up a dramatic plume of smoke visible across the city. Residents in Venice Beach, some 6 miles (10 kilometers) away, reported seeing the flames. It was one of several blazes across the area.

Sections of Interstate 10 and the scenic Pacific Coast Highway were closed to all non-essential traffic to aid in evacuation efforts. But other roads were blocked. Some residents jumped out of their vehicles to get out of danger and waited to be picked up.

Resident Kelsey Trainor said the only road in and out of her neighborhood was completely blocked. Ash fell all around them while fires burned on both sides of the road.

“We looked across and the fire had jumped from one side of the road to the other side of the road,” Trainor said. “People were getting out of the cars with their dogs and babies and bags, they were crying and screaming. The road was just blocked, like full-on blocked for an hour.”

An Associated Press journalist saw a roof and chimney of one home in flames and another residence where the walls were burning. The neighborhood that borders Malibu about 20 miles (32 kilometers) west of downtown LA includes hillside streets of tightly packed homes along winding roads nestled against the Santa Monica Mountains and stretches down to beaches along the Pacific Ocean.

Long-time Palisades resident Will Adams said he was down in town when the fires started and immediately went to pick his two kids up from St. Matthews Parish’s school, which is now in the line of the fire.

His wife, who was at home, was driving down the main evacuation road for residents in the upper part of the neighborhood when embers flew into her car.

“She vacated her car and left it running,” Adams said. She and many other residents walked down toward the ocean until it was safe.

Adams said he had never seen a fire this low into the neighborhood in the 56 years he’s lived there.

“It is crazy, it’s everywhere, in all the nooks and crannies of the Palisades. One home’s safe, the other one’s up in flames,” Adams said.

He watched as the sky turned brown and then black as homes started burning. He could hear loud popping and bangs “like small explosions,” which he said he believes were the transformers exploding on the electric poles.

Actor James Woods posted footage of flames burning through bushes and past palm trees on a hill near his home. The towering orange flames billowed among the landscaped yards between the homes.

“Standing in my driveway, getting ready to evacuate,” Woods said in the short video on X.

Actor Steve Guttenberg, who lives in the Pacific Palisades, urged people who abandoned their cars to leave their keys behind so they could be moved to make way for fire trucks.

“This is not a parking lot,” Guttenberg told KTLA. “I have friends up there and they can’t evacuate … I’m walking up there as far as I can moving cars.”

The erratic weather caused President Joe Biden to cancel plans to travel to inland Riverside County, California, where he was to announce the establishment of two new national monuments in the state. Biden will deliver his remarks in Los Angeles instead.

The National Weather Service said the wind event that was expected to peak early Wednesday could be the strongest Santa Anawindstorm in more than a decade across Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

The Los Angeles Unified School District said it was temporarily relocating students from three campuses in the Pacific Palisades area due to the fire.

Amazon and MGM Studios canceled a premiere of Jennifer Lopez’s new film “Unstoppable” due to the fires and high winds.

The winds will act as an “atmospheric blow-dryer” for vegetation, bringing a long period of fire risk, said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the University of California, Los Angeles and the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

“We really haven't seen a season as dry as this one follow a season as wet as the previous one,” Swain said Monday.

Recent dry winds, including the notorious Santa Anas, have contributed to warmer-than-average temperatures in Southern California, where there’s been very little rain so far this season.

Southern California hasn’t seen more than 0.1 inches (0.25 centimeters) of rain since early May. Much of the region has fallen into moderate drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Meanwhile, up north, there have been multiple drenching storms.

Areas where gusts could create extreme fire conditions include the charred footprint of last month’s wind-driven Franklin Fire, which damaged or destroyed 48 structures, mostly homes, in and around Malibu.

Associated Press writers Jaimie Ding in Los Angeles contributed to this report, Julie Watson in San Diego, and videojournalist Eugene Garcia in Los Angeles contributed.