Seoul standoff Impeached president fights on despite arrest attempt

South Korean anticorruption officials attempting to arrest the country's suspended president, Yoon Suk Yeol, must know by now what he meant by his repeated vows to "fight to the end".

-  Justin McCurry

Since his calamitous declaration of martial law, Yoon, along with most of his party, his legal team and, crucially, his security detail, have resisted every attempt to hold him politically and legally accountable.

Last Friday, after a tense standoff between anti-corruption officials and security staff assigned to Yoon, South Korea's gravest political crisis in decades rumbled on, the day closing with another cliffhanger worthy of one of the country's wildly popular TV dramas.

No one who has followed the turmoil in recent weeks could have guessed how the visit by 100 officials and police officers would play out. Almost six hours after the attempted arrest began, it ended with Yoon still ensconced in his official residence and not staring at the walls of a cell in Seoul's detention centre.

Yoon is responding to a political crisis of his making with the same qualities he used to confront striking doctors and resist calls for an investigation into scandals surrounding his wife, Kim Keon Hee - with a defiance that borders on arrogance.