President Yoon Suk-yeol closes his eyes for a moment at the fifth hearing of his impeachment trial held at the Constitutional Court in Seoul on February 4. Reporter Lee Joon-heon

The President Yoon Suk-yeol, who is currently in jail on charges of being the leader of the insurrection that occurred on December 3 last year, was found to have directly instructed Lee Sang-min, then Minister of the Interior and Safety of South Korea, to block and cut off the electricity and the water at media outlets including the Kyunghyang Shinmun. Such measures were not taken by the Fifth Republic military regime, which massacred citizens and seized power with forces of arms. Yoon reportedly said to the leadership of the ruling People’s Power Party (PPP) that the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (PDK) acted as its pleases at the National Assembly and compared the DPK to the “dictatorship of the Nazis” when the PPP leadership visited him at the Seoul Detention Center on February 3. However, Yoon's unconstitutional act of trying to crush the press criticizing the government would only be committed by Nazis.

According to the indictment against Yoon presented to the National Assembly by the prosecution, former minister Lee came into the president's office shortly before Yoon declared martial law last December 3 and Yoon showed Lee a memo that read, “At around midnight, block the Kyunghyang Shinmun, the Hankyoreh, MBC, JTBC, and Flower Research, and cut off power and water through the National Fire Agency,” and instructed him to take action after the declaration of martial law. Yoon wanted to prevent media critical of the government from publishing newspapers and broadcasting.

After checking the status of the police's actions immediately after the martial law declaration, Lee instructed Heo Seok-gon, Chief of the National Fire Agency, saying, “Police will be deployed to the Kyunghyang Shinmun, the Hankyoreh, MBC, JTBC, and Flower Research around the midnight, but if you receive a request from the National Police Agency to cut power and water supply, please cooperate and take action.” Heo relayed the order to Lee Young-pal, deputy chief of the National Fire Agency, who in turn relayed it to Hwang Ki-seok, head of the Seoul Metropolitan Fire and Disaster Headquarters.

The fact that Lee ordered the government agencies to “cooperate with power outages and water cuts at media outlets” immediately after the declaration of martial law was revealed in the middle of January when Heo admitted it to the National Assembly, but it was first confirmed that the order was carried out by Yoon’s instruction. On January 22, the former minister “refused to answer” questions during the first hearing of the National Assembly's special committee to investigate the uprising. He also refused to testify under oath to avoid legal liability for perjury. Although the emergency martial law failed to be implemented due to civil resistance and a swift response by the National Assembly, Lee, used to be a judge, also knows that planning such a measure is itself an insurrection, and that he would be hard-pressed to avoid legal liability.

Raids and prosecutions of media organizations and journalists continued throughout Yoon's regime. Repression of the media through the Korea Communications Commission and the Korea Communications Standards Commission was routine. His plan to block and cut off power and water at media outlets is an extension of that. These measures are unthinkable without seeing the critical media as a target to be eradicated, and can only be seen as dreaming of totalitarianism without the media's monitoring and supervision of the president’s power abuse.

In the hearing of his impeachment trial at the Constitutional Court on February 4, Yoon denied that he tried to block the National Assembly's vote to lift martial law, saying, “Nothing actually happened.” However, Kwak Jong-geun, a former special warfare commander, repeatedly testified during the second hearing of the National Assembly's special committee on insurgency that Yoon ordered him to remove lawmakers from the National Assembly. There are full of such testimonies and evidence. Still, would you insist that “it was not a lawmaker but an agent” that you told to pull out of the National Assembly? Yoon should know that the fact that a crime against the constitutional order is unsuccessful does not erase the fact that a crime was attempted.