[News Today] YOON DENIES CIO’S AUTHORITY

[LEAD]
Just before being handed over to the Corruption Investigation Office for High Ranking Officials, President Yoon Suk Yeol released a pre-recorded video. In it, he complied with the summons but strongly highlighted the "illegality" of the process. He sharply condemned both the CIO's investigation and the issuance of the arrest warrant.

[REPORT]
President Yoon Suk Yeol claimed that he showed up at the Corruption Investigation Office for High Ranking Officials building for questioning only to prevent an ugly bloodshed, not to acknowledge the CIO’s investigative authority.

Yoon Suk Yeol / President
I accept such an illegal, invalid procedure as a president who should defend Korea’s Constitution, legal system only because I want to prevent an ugly bloodshed, not because I acknowledge it.

In a nearly three-minute long video, he angrily condemned the agency using the expression that “the law has fallen apart.”

He claimed that a warrant was issued to an institution without investigative authority and that a court without the right to examine a warrant issued warrants for arrest and search and seizure.

Yoon Suk Yeol / President
I couldn’t help but deplore the perpetration of repeated unlawfulness, the enforcement of a process compelled by an invalid warrant.

When President Yoon was arrested, the ruling People Power Party said that the rule of law collapsed and it will leave a big stain on the history of free democracy.

Meanwhile, the opposition Democratic Party referred to the president’s arrest as “the restoration of Constitutional order and democracy, and the first step toward the realization of rule of law.”