Wife of South Korea’s jailed ex-President Yoon arrested : NPR

The former First Lady of South Korea, Kim Keon Hee, wife of former president Yoon Suk Yeol, arrives in court to attend a hearing to examine his arrest warrant requested by special prosecutors in Seoul, South Korea.

Jung yeon-je / ap via afp

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Jung yeon-je / ap via afp

Seoul, South Korea – The wife of the former president of South Korea, Yoon Suk Yeol, was arrested while the investigators seek to welcome him for various alleged crimes, in particular corruption, manipulation of actions and interference in the selection of a candidate.

By granting a special prosecutor for an arrest warrant on Tuesday, the Central District Court of Seoul said Kim Keon Hee posed a risk of destroying evidence.

The investigation into KIM is one of the three special prosecutor probes launched under the new Liberal government of Seoul targeting the presidency of Yoon, a curator who was removed from his functions in April and rearore last month for his brief taxation of the martial law in December.

While the self-inflicted fall of Yoon has extended a series of decades of South Korean presidents ending badly, he and Kim are the first former presidential couple to be imprisoned simultaneously for criminal allegations.

The seizure of surprising but poorly planned power of Yoon on December 3 came in the middle of an apparently routine confrontation with the liberals, which he described as “anti-state” forces abusing their legislative majority to block his program. Some political opponents wondered if Yoon’s actions were at least partly motivated by growing allegations against his wife, which harmed his approval notes and gave political ammunition to his rivals.

Kim did not speak to journalists when she arrived at the Court of Seoul on Tuesday for a several hour hearing at the mandate request. It is owned in a detention center in the south of Seoul, separated from the establishment holding Yoon. It is expected to do in front of more and more questioned by investigators, who can extend her detention up to 20 days before officially depositing charges.

The investigation team led by special prosecutor Min Jong-Ki, who was appointed in June by the new Liberal president Lee Jae Myung, initially questioned Kim for about seven hours on Wednesday last week before deciding to request his arrest.

Kim spoke briefly to journalists when she appeared for last week’s interrogations, launched waves for causing concerns to the public, but also to assert that she would refuse allegations against her, describing herself as “someone insignificant”.

Investigators suspect that Kim and Yoon have exerted an excessive influence on the power of the conservative people to appoint a specific candidate during a legislative election in 2022, allegedly at the request of the electoral broker Myung Tae-Kyun. Myung faces accusations of conducting free opinion investigations for Yoon using manipulated data that may have helped him win the presidential primaries of the party before his election to the presidency.

Kim is linked separately to several allegations of corruption, in particular the affirmations that she has received luxury gifts via an acting adventure as an intermediary for a church manager in unification to seek commercial favors, and a possible involvement in a program to manipulate the equity of shares linked to a local BMW concession company.

The Min Investigation team arrested one of the partners Close Kim earlier Tuesday after his arrival from Vietnam, while they suspect that he used his connection with the former First Lady to obtain millions of dollars in commercial investments for his financial company in difficulty.

Investigators also made a descent on Monday in a construction company for allegations according to which its president bought a luxury necklace worth $ 43,000, which they believe to be the same as Kim wore while accompanying Yoon during a trip to 2022 in Europe. Investigators suspect that the necklace was perhaps linked to the hiring of the son-in-law of the president as chief of staff of the minister at the time, Han Duck-Soo, No. 2 in Yoon, shortly before the presidential trip. Kim would have denied the accusations, saying that the necklace she was wearing in Europe was not an authentic room but a false borrowed.

During his mandate, Yoon rejected calls to investigate his wife as base -based political and veto and vetoed several bills of the Legislative Assembly led by Liberals asking for independent probes on allegations.

Shortly after winning the first presidential election in June, the new president Lee Jae Myung approved legislation to launch radical special surveys on the debacle of the Martial Law of Yoon, the allegations against his wife and the death of a navy drowning in 2023 in a flooding operation, an incident that the Liberals claim that the Government of Yoon to hide.

The decree of the Martial law of Yoon lasted only hours, after a quorum of legislators managed to unravel a blockade of highly armed soldiers and voted to revoke the measure. He was dismissed by legislators on December 14 and was officially removed from his functions by the Constitutional Court in April.

Yoon, who was sent back to prison last month after a release of March and faces a trial for high issues on the rebellion and other accusations, resisted investigators on several occasions to force him to answer questions about his wife.