President Yoon Suk Yeol has claimed that the former chief of the Defense Counterintelligence Command attempted to locate key politicians on the night of December 3 to monitor their movements, not to arrest them, but called the attempt “unnecessary and wrong.” 

Yoon made the statements Thursday during the tenth hearing in his impeachment trial at the Constitutional Court. 

The suspended president said it was by reading an article that he learned about Yeo In-hyung, then the head of the Defense Counterintelligence Command, asking National Police Agency Commissioner General Cho Ji-ho to locate and arrest certain well-known politicians, and that he later asked then-defense minister Kim Yong-hyun about it. 

Yoon said Yeo made the request because he had no idea how to conduct an investigation and the police told him it was difficult to locate people without the information on their cellphones.

The president added that he thinks Yeo’s attempt to locate key politicians was unnecessary and wrong. 

According to Yoon’s indictment, Yeo asked the police chief to locate about ten prominent politicians, including the chiefs of the two major rival parties and National Assembly Speaker Woo Won-shik, to arrest them.