South Korean officials in stand-off to arrest impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol

Seoul: Officials in South Korea entered the compound of President Yoon Suk Yeol to try to take him in for questioning over insurrection charges Friday. But after clearing away crowds of supporters attempting to block their path, they appeared to be in a standoff inside the residence with the president’s personal security team as the high-stakes drama unfolded.

It was the latest move by officials to hold Yoon accountable for his short-lived declaration of martial law last month that plunged the country into a political crisis.

Yoon, who was impeached by parliament last month, has ignored repeated summonses from the investigators to appear for questioning, saying it was within his powers as president to place his country under military rule for the first time in 45 years. Thousands of his supporters have camped near his residence in recent days, vowing to block officials from detaining him. Large numbers of police officers were deployed around the neighborhood to maintain order.

Lawyers for Yoon repeated their assertion Friday that the attempt to detain him was illegal. “The execution of an illegal and invalid warrant is clearly unlawful,” they said in a statement.

As the motorcade carrying the officials with the detention warrant approached Yoon’s residence Friday morning, supporters who had camped out overnight on a nearby pavement erupted in anger. They waved flags and chanted: “Today is the day! We will prevail! Let’s protect Yoon Suk Yeol.”

But police held them off with barricades, preventing the protesters from trying to stop the officials from reaching Yoon’s residence in a hilly neighborhood in central Seoul.

The officials were allowed to move past the white steel gate into the compound of Yoon’s residence shortly after 8 am, but there was no word of him being detained as of 9:20 am. A brief scuffle broke out beyond the gate between police officers and what appeared to be officials stationed inside, footage from MBC-TV showed.

The Corruption Investigation Office for High-Ranking Officials — an independent government agency specializing in crimes involving senior leaders — obtained a court warrant Tuesday to detain him. The officials must apply for a separate court warrant within 48 hours if they want to formally arrest and continue to hold him.

Yoon has vowed to contest the charges, and his lawyer, Yoon Kab-keun, this week filed an injunction to challenge the validity of the detention warrant.