South Korea: Ex-PM Han, ex-Dy PM Choi slapped with exit ban in martial law probe

Seoul, May 27 (IANS) South Korean former Prime Minister Han Duck-soo and former Deputy Prime Minister Choi Sang-mok have been banned from leaving the country as suspects in the alleged insurrection case related to former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s botched martial law attempt, police said on Tuesday.

The exit ban was reportedly imposed on Han and Choi around the middle of this month.

The police’s special investigation unit handling the high-profile case called in Han, Choi and former Interior Minister Lee Sang-min on Monday for questioning for about 10 hours about their alleged involvement in Yoon’s martial law declaration on December 3 last year. Lee was slapped with the exit ban earlier in December.

The former ministers were reportedly grilled about whether they made false statements about the process of receiving martial law-related documents during a Cabinet meeting convened by Yoon on the night of December 3, as police have completed an analysis of surveillance footage of the presidential office’s Cabinet meeting room and hallway.

Han has denied his charges, saying in February that he only realised he had been carrying the martial law declaration document in the back pocket of his suit after the decree was rescinded by an Assembly vote, Yonhap news agency reported.

Choi, who is suspected of having received a memo from Yoon ordering a budget for an emergency legislative body during the December 3 Cabinet meeting, has said that someone had handed him a “folded note” but he was too overwhelmed at the time to read it.

Police also questioned Lee over allegations that Yoon had ordered him to cut off the power and water supply at major local media outlets, though he testified earlier that Yoon did not give such orders.

Earlier on Monday, South Korean police had detected signs of some call records of a secure phone held by Yoon Suk Yeol being remotely deleted, just days after his failed martial law attempt.

The records of Yoon’s calls with Hong Jang-won, former first deputy director of the National Intelligence Service, and Kim Bong-sik, former chief of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, were deleted on December 6, three days after Yoon’s martial law declaration, according to the official at the police’s special investigation team.

Police also launched an investigation on charges of destruction of evidence but have yet to narrow down a suspect.

–IANS

int/jk/rad