KB News Desk
The National Assembly on Tuesday passed a contentious bill to extend a special counsel investigation into former President Yoon Suk Yeol and his wife, former first lady Kim Keon Hee, over the 2024 martial law and several corruption scandals.
The special counsel investigation led by Kwon Chang-young and set to end Friday will now continue through to late August after the proposed revision passed with a 173-0 vote. The Democratic Party of Korea holds the majority in parliament, meaning it can push bills through without needing the consent of the main opposition People Power Party.
The vote came shortly after 183 lawmakers voted to override a filibuster launched by People Power Party lawmakers. The main opposition party has 109 lawmakers, meaning it cannot sustain a filibuster for more than 24 hours on its own.
Kwon’s team picked up after three other special counsels’ six-month investigations into the Yoon couple. In the past five months of operation, it had the court issue arrest warrants for seven individuals, the most recent of which was for Board of Audit and Inspection Commissioner Yoo Byung-ho.
Yoo was arrested for his role in covering up for the former first lady regarding corruption allegations linked to relocating the presidential residence during Yoon’s tenure.
Kwon’s arrest warrant requests for 11 other figures had been rejected. In a media briefing Monday, assistant special counsel Kim Ji-mi said the requests had been rejected because the court ruled that making such arrests became less urgent as time passed, adding that the court’s grounds for some of the rejections were “hard to understand.”
