Seoul, Jan 29 (IANS) Former and current aides to South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol are seeking to visit the impeached President at a detention centre where he is staying around next week, a presidential official said on Wednesday.
“Nothing is certain yet since the visit requires approval but we believe it’s only right we visit him,” the senior presidential official told via phone.
A former presidential official also said they are considering visiting after the Lunar New Year holiday, which lasts until Thursday.
Yoon has been incarcerated at the Seoul Detention Centre in Uiwang, south of the capital, since his formal arrest on December 19, Yonhap news agency reported.
Earlier on January 28, Yoon Suk Yeol defended his decision to declare martial law during a meeting with his legal representatives on Tuesday.
Seok Dong-hyeon, one of Yoon’s lawyers, told reporters that Yoon had wondered aloud how his decision to impose martial law on December 3 could be considered an act of insurrection when “everything was done within the boundaries of the Constitution.”
Seok and other lawyers met with Yoon at the Seoul Detention Centre on Tuesday, two days after Yoon became the first sitting South Korean president to be indicted under detention.
Yoon was accused of conspiring with former Defence Minister Kim Yong-hyun and others to incite an insurrection on December 3 by declaring an unconstitutional and illegal state of emergency, despite the absence of any signs of war, armed conflict, or a comparable national crisis.
Yoon was also alleged to have sent military troops to the National Assembly in order to prevent lawmakers from voting down the martial law declaration and to have planned to arrest key political figures.
According to Seok, Yoon stated that he exercised his constitutional rights to declare martial law to inform the people of the crisis the nation was facing, with the main opposition Democratic Party (DP) having taken over parliament.
Yoon also noted that he had immediately lifted the martial law once the National Assembly voted down his declaration.
–IANS
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