Statement on the People Power Party’s misdirection regarding the arrest warrant for Insurrection Ringleader Yoon Suk-yeol 

The People Power Party must end its clumsy attempt to blur the legal distinctions between arrest warrants and detention warrants, as though tossing unrelated arguments into the mix will magically obscure the truth. This desperate strategy resembles a chef throwing random ingredients into a pot, hoping for a miracle. 

Let us clarify. The conditions for an arrest warrant are simple: 

1.   There must be reasonable grounds to suspect that a crime has been committed, and 

2.   The individual must have failed, or be likely to fail, to comply with legitimate investigative requests. 

Flight risk or evidence tampering? Those concerns apply only to detention warrants. 

Yet, the insurrection co-conspirators, otherwise known as the People Power Party, are fixated on irrelevancies, questioning whether Yoon Suk-yeol might flee or destroy evidence. This conflation of distinct warrant criteria is either a glaring display of ignorance or a calculated effort to mislead. 

Genuine confusion or deliberate misdirection, it does not matter. What matters is that this blatant attempt to muddy the waters insults the public’s intelligence and undermines the principles of justice. 

To be clear, the only overlap between arrest and detention warrants is reasonable grounds to suspect a crime. That’s it. 

So, to the People Power Party. Wake up. Your attempts to obscure the truth are not just unbecoming. They are an embarrassment to democracy. 

December 31, 2024 

Sunwoo Kang, Chair of International Committee, Democratic Party of Korea​