When around 100 criminal investigators and police officers entered a hilly compound in central Seoul on Friday morning, they tried to achieve something that has never been done before in South Korea: detain a sitting president.
First, they made it through two blockades formed by parked vehicles and people. Then, when they came within 650 feet of the building where President Yoon Suk Yeol was believed to be holed up, they came face to face with an even more formidable barrier: 10 buses and cars along with 200 elite soldiers and bodyguards belonging to Mr. Yoon’s Presidential Security Service. Small scuffles erupted as the investigators tried in vain to break through and serve a court-issued warrant to take Mr. Yoon away.
Three prosecutors were allowed to approach the building. But there, Mr. Yoon’s lawyers told them that they could not serve the warrant because it was “illegally” issued, according to officials who briefed news media about what happened inside the compound.
Outnumbered, the 100 officials retreated after a five-and-a-half-hour standoff.
“It’s deeply regrettable,” the Corruption Investigation Office for High-Ranking Officials, the independent government agency that led the raid into the presidential compound on Friday, said in a statement. It accused Mr. Yoon — who has already been suspended from office after being impeached by Parliament last month — of refusing to honor a court-issued warrant. “We will discuss what our next step should be.”
The failure to bring in the deeply unpopular president deepened a growing sense of helplessness among South Koreans, exacerbated by the country’s sharply polarized politics. The nation appears rudderless and distracted by infighting at a time when it faces major challenges at home and on the international scene.
There is already uncertainty around its alliance with the United States as the unpredictable Donald J. Trump prepares to return to the White House. Seoul’s decades-old foe North Korea has sought to score propaganda points from the South’s political quagmire, with its state media reporting that its neighbor was in “paralysis of its state administration and spiraling sociopolitical confusion.”
And, at home, the crash of a Jeju Air passenger jet that killed 179 of the 181 people on board on Sunday has added to challenges that include widespread labor strikes and rising household debts. On Thursday, the finance ministry sharply downgraded its growth forecast for 2025.
A Constitutional Court is deliberating whether to remove Mr. Yoon, who was impeached on Dec. 14 by the National Assembly. That came after he abruptly declared martial law 11 days earlier, prompting national outrage and calls for his ouster.
On Friday, the besieged Mr. Yoon vowed to fight to return to office through the Constitutional Court trial and showed he had no intention of voluntarily subjecting himself to criminal investigations. Mr. Yoon faces accusations that he committed insurrection by sending armed troops into the National Assembly during his short-lived military rule.
By refusing to honor the warrant, Mr. Yoon “kept adding more reasons he should be removed from office through impeachment,” said Lim Ji-bong, a professor of law at Sogang University in Seoul.
“He may think he survived today, but what he did today would not go down very well with the justices at the Constitutional Court and judges who would eventually try his insurrection case.”
Mr. Yoon is not the first South Korean politician who has defied court warrants to detain them. In 1995, prosecutors wanted to question the former military dictator Chun Doo-hwan on insurrection and mutiny charges stemming from his role in a 1979 coup and a massacre of demonstrators the following year. He defied the summons and headed to his southern hometown, trailed by a crowd of supporters.
The prosecutors chased him there. After an overnight standoff, Mr. Chun surrendered himself.
But unlike Mr. Yoon, Mr. Chun was out of office when he faced the insurrection charge. Mr. Yoon, though suspended, is still guarded with the full support of his Presidential Security Service, a government agency that hires teams of elite bodyguards and anti-terrorist experts selected from the police, military and other government services.
“People who have seen him rely on his bodyguards as a shield against his legal trouble will see him as a coward,” Mr. Lim said.
The investigators warned that they would charge the presidential bodyguards with obstruction of justice.
“We will do everything we can to provide security for the object of our service according to laws and principles,” the Presidential Security Service said in a statement.
Public surveys showed that a majority of South Koreans wanted Mr. Yoon ousted and punished for insurrection. But his governing party, which opposed his impeachment, denounced attempts to hold him.
Mr. Yoon also has die-hard supporters — mostly among mostly older South Koreans. Thousands of his supporters have been camped out for days on the pavement, chanting, “Let’s protect Yoon Suk Yeol!”
In a message delivered on New Year’s Day, Mr. Yoon called them “citizens who love freedom and democracy” and thanked them for braving the cold weather to show their support out on the street near his home.
“I will fight with you to the end to save this country,” Mr. Yoon said.
When the officials withdrew from Mr. Yoon’s compound, they shouted: “We have won!”
Protesters who have been clamoring for Mr. Yoon’s arrest began gathering again on Friday, marching near Mr. Yoon’s residence and shouting “Arrest Yoon Suk Yeol!” They, as well as the country’s opposition parties, expressed fury over the failure to detain Mr. Yoon, calling his presidential security service “accomplices” in an insurrection.
“I’m so angry,” said Lee Ye-seul, 19, a university student in Seoul. “I will speak out until he is removed and the people involved in the insurrection are punished.”
To Mr. Yoon’s supporters outside his residence, the security service was the last line of defense to save Mr. Yoon.
“The presidential guard should throw grenades if necessary to stop them from coming near the president,” said Lee Young-jin, 65.
But Mr. Yoon’s tactic of stoking political divides to avoid his legal trouble reflected poorly on South Korea, said Ahn Byong-jin, a professor of political science at Kyung Hee University in Seoul.
It “exposed weaknesses in South Korea as a democracy,” he said.
