South Korea adjourns impeachment trial as Yoon remains elusive 

The first hearing in the impeachment trial of South Korea’s suspended President Yoon Suk-yeol has been adjourned after he failed to appear.

The trial, which began on Tuesday in the capital, Seoul, will determine whether to strip Yoon of his presidential duties over a failed power grab in December. The hearing was adjourned minutes after it started in the country’s Constitutional Court due to Yoon’s absence.

The president’s lawyers had said he would not attend the hearing, saying the ongoing bid by authorities to detain him prevented him from expressing his position at the trial. Yoon has been holed up in his hillside villa in Seoul for weeks in an effort to evade arrest.

The court has 180 days from December 14 to make its ruling. Yoon would be formally removed from office if at least six of the eight justices voted in support of impeachment.

According to South Korean law, the court must set a new date for a hearing before they can proceed without his participation. The next hearing is now scheduled for Thursday.

Yoon’s lawyers said he would decide whether to appear after discussions.

The lawyers also repeated claims that the arrest warrant held by investigating authorities is invalid, and that Yoon would respond to a valid detention warrant executed legally.

Investigators from the Corruption Investigation Office for High-Ranking Officials (CIO) have spent recent weeks seeking to arrest Yoon, but have met resistance from the presidential guard, as well as supporters in front of his mansion.

As the trial opened, authorities said they were also preparing a second attempt to take him into custody.

In response, presidential chief of staff Chung Jin-suk claimed in a statement that the anticorruption agency investigators and police were trying to drag Yoon out of the mansion like a member of a “South American drug cartel”.

He suggested that the suspended president could instead be questioned at a “third site” or at his residence.

However, Yoon’s lawyers said they have no immediate plans to make the president available for questioning.

On January 3, the Presidential Security Service prevented investigators from detaining Yoon during a nearly six-hour standoff.

The CIO and police, which are jointly investigating whether Yoon’s brief martial law declaration amounted to an attempted rebellion, have pledged more forceful measures to arrest him.

“They’re trying to discuss how they’re going to execute the arrest warrant in an orderly and peaceful manner,” Al Jazeera’s Patrick Fok reported from Seoul.

“We are hearing reports that it may involve as many as 1,000 police officers to overwhelm the Presidential Security Service.”