South Korea’s SEOUL Investigators are trying to accuse the wife of South Korea’s imprisoned former president Yoon Suk Yeol with a number of alleged offenses, such as bribery, stock manipulation, and interference in a candidate’s election.
Late Tuesday, the Seoul Central District Court granted an arrest order requested by a special prosecutor, citing Kim Keon Hee’s potential to destroy evidence.
Under Seoul’s new liberal government, the inquiry against Kim is one of three special prosecutor probes aimed at the administration of Yoon, a conservative who was ousted from office in April and imprisoned again last month for briefly imposing martial emergency in December.
Although Yoon and Kim are the first former presidential couple to be imprisoned concurrently on criminal charges, their self-inflicted demise prolonged a decades-long streak of South Korean presidencies ending unhappily.
During a seemingly typical confrontation with the liberals, whom he saw as “anti-state” forces abusing their legislative majority to thwart his goals, Yoon launched his unexpected but ill-thought-out power grab on December 3. Some political adversaries have questioned if Yoon’s actions were influenced by the mounting accusations against his wife, which negatively impacted his approval ratings and provided his opponents with political leverage.
Kim showed up at the Seoul court on Tuesday for an hours-long hearing on the warrant request without speaking to media. She is being detained at a facility in southern Seoul that is distinct from the one where Yoon is being housed. Investigators, who have the authority to keep her in custody for up to 20 days before formally charging her, are likely to question her more on Thursday.
Prior to deciding to pursue Kim’s arrest, the investigating team, headed by Special Prosecutor Min Joong-ki, who was appointed by new liberal President Lee Jae Myung in June, questioned Kim for almost seven hours on Wednesday of last week.
During her brief appearance for interrogation last week, Kim gave reporters a hazy apology for raising public concerns while simultaneously implying that she would refute the accusations against her, characterizing herself as “someone insignificant.”
Investigators believe that, at the claimed request of election broker Myung Tae-kyun, Kim and Yoon unduly influenced the conservative People Power Party to nominate a particular candidate in a 2022 legislative by-election. Myung is accused of utilizing altered data to perform free opinion surveys for Yoon, which may have helped him win the party’s presidential primary prior to his victory.
Kim is separately connected to a number of corruption allegations, such as allegations that she was involved in a stock price manipulation scheme connected to a local BMW dealership company and that she received opulent gifts through a fortune teller who acted as a middleman for a Unification Church official looking for business favors.
As they investigate allegations that Kim leveraged his relationship with the former first lady to obtain millions of dollars in business investments for his financially troubled company, Min’s investigative team arrested one of Kim’s close allies earlier Tuesday after he arrived from Vietnam.
Investigators also raided a construction company Monday on suspicion that its chairman bought a $43,000 luxury necklace, which they say is the identical necklace Kim wore with Yoon on a trip to Europe in 2022. Investigators believe the necklace may have been connected to the chairman’s son-in-law’s appointment just before the presidential trip as Yoon’s No. 2 and chief of staff to then-Prime Minister Han Duck-soo. Kim has allegedly refuted the allegations, stating that the jewelry she wore while in Europe was a borrowed fake rather than an original item.
Yoon vetoed several measures from the liberal-led legislature that sought independent investigations into the claims while he was in power, dismissing efforts to look into his wife as unfounded political assaults.
New President Lee Jae Myung approved legislation to begin extensive special investigations into Yoon’s martial law fiasco, the accusations against his wife, and the drowning death of a marine during a flood rescue operation in 2023—an incident that liberals say Yoon’s government attempted to conceal—shortly after winning the June early presidential election.
A quorum of parliament broke past a barricade of highly armed troops and voted to annul Yoon’s martial law declaration, which was lifted after just a few hours. The Constitutional Court formally ousted him from office in April after parliament impeached him on December 14.
Yoon has fought investigators’ attempts to force him to answer questions about his wife on multiple occasions. He was returned to prison this month after being released in March and is facing a high-stakes trial on allegations of rebellion and other offenses.
Copyright 2025 NPR
