SEOUL: South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s security chief said on Friday the impeached leader, who faces arrest over a criminal probe into his Dec. 3 martial law bid, has been unfairly treated for a sitting leader and warned bloodshed must be avoided.
Park Chong-jun, head of the Presidential Security Service (PSS), is himself under investigation for obstructing official duty related to a six-hour standoff last week between PSS agents and investigators trying to execute an arrest warrant for Yoon.
Arriving at police headquarters for questioning, Park, who is a former senior police official, said the current attempt to arrest a sitting president is wrong and Yoon deserved treatment “becoming of” the country’s status.
“I believe there should not be any physical clash or bloodshed under any circumstances,” Park told reporters, adding acting President Choi Sang-mok has not responded to his request for safety assurances for officials involved.
Hundreds of PSS agents blockaded the presidential compound and thwarted investigators from trying to arrest Yoon last Friday. The investigators were pulled back because of the risk of a clash.
Officials of the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO), which is leading the investigation, have said PSS agents were carrying firearms during the standoff although no weapons were drawn.
The investigators obtained a new arrest warrant this week after Yoon defied repeated summons to appear for questioning.
On Thursday, lawyers for Yoon said the arrest warrant was illegal and invalid.
Yoon is under a separate Constitutional Court trial reviewing parliament’s impeachment of him on Dec. 14 to decide whether to remove him from office permanently or reinstate him. His lawyers have said Yoon will accept that verdict.
As Yoon awaits his fate, holed up inside his hillside residence, polls released this week showed a revival of support for his ruling People Power Party (PPP) and calls for his permanent removal slipping.
A Gallup Korea survey published on Friday showed 64 percent of respondents back Yoon’s removal from office, compared to 75 percent who favored it soon after the martial law declaration.
The PPP’s approval rating rose to 34 percent, a level similar to the period before Dec. 3, in the poll of 1,004 people this week, from 24 percent about a month ago.
Analysts said the prolonged uncertainty over Yoon’s fate has not only emboldened his supporters but softened some critics concerned that the liberal opposition Democratic Party leader, who is himself on trial on allegations of criminal wrongdoings, may become president.

PARIS: The last two years exceeded on average a critical warming limit for the first time as global temperatures soar “beyond what modern humans have ever experienced,” an EU agency said Friday.
This does not mean the internationally-agreed 1.5°C warming threshold has been permanently breached, but the Copernicus Climate Change Service said it was drawing dangerously near.
The EU monitor confirmed that 2024 was the hottest year on record, surpassing 2023 and extending a streak of extraordinary heat that fueled climate extremes on all continents.
Another record-breaking year is not anticipated in 2025, as climate skeptic Donald Trump takes office, and a deadline looms for nations to commit to deeper cuts to rising levels of greenhouse gases.
But the UK weather service predicts 2025 will still rank among the top three warmest years in the history books.
This excess heat supercharges extreme weather, and 2024 saw countries from Spain to Kenya, the United States and Nepal hit by disasters that cost more than $300 billion by some estimates.
Los Angeles is battling deadly wildfires that have destroyed thousands of buildings and forced tens of thousands to flee their homes. US President Joe Biden said the fires were the most “devastating” to hit California and were proof that “climate change is real.”
Copernicus said sustained, unprecedented warming made average temperatures over 2023 and 2024 more than 1.5°Celsius hotter than pre-industrial times.
Nearly 200 nations agreed in Paris in 2015 that meeting 1.5°C offered the best chance of preventing the most catastrophic repercussions of climate change.
But the world is nowhere on track to meeting that target.
“We are now teetering on the edge of passing the 1.5°C level,” said Copernicus climate deputy director Samantha Burgess.
Copernicus records go back to 1940 but other sources of climate data, such as ice cores and tree rings, allow scientists to say the Earth today is likely the warmest it has been in tens of thousands of years.
The 1.5°C threshold is measured in decades, not individual years, but Copernicus said reaching this limit even briefly illustrated the unprecedented changes being brought about by humanity.
Scientists say every fraction of a degree above 1.5°C is consequential, and that beyond a certain point the climate could shift in ways that are difficult to anticipate.
At present levels, human-driven climate change is already making droughts, storms, floods and heatwaves more frequent and intense.
The oceans, a crucial climate regulator which absorb 90 percent of excess heat from greenhouse gases, warmed to record levels in 2024, straining coral reefs and marine life and stirring violent weather.
Warmer seas mean higher evaporation and greater moisture in the atmosphere, causing heavier rainfall, feeding energy into cyclones and bringing sometimes unbearable humidity.
Water vapor in the atmosphere hit fresh highs in 2024 and combined with elevated temperatures caused floods, heatwaves and “misery for millions of people,” Burgess said.
Johan Rockstrom of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said hitting 1.5°C was a “stark warning sign.”
“We have now experienced the first taste of a 1.5°C world, which has cost people and the global economy unprecedented suffering and economic costs,” he said.
Scientists say the onset of a warming El Nino phenomenon in 2023 contributed to the record heat that followed.
But El Nino ended in early 2024, and scientists have puzzled over why global temperatures have remained at record or near-record levels ever since.
In December, the World Meteorological Organization said if an opposite La Nina event took over in coming months it would be too “weak and short-lived” to have much of a cooling effect.
“The future is in our hands – swift and decisive action can still alter the trajectory of our future climate,” said Copernicus climate director Carlo Buontempo.
Nations agreed to transition away from fossil fuels at a UN summit in 2023 but the latest meeting in November struggled to make any progress around how to make deeper reductions to heat-trapping emissions.