S. Korea's court holds 7th hearing of Yoon's impeachment trial, with Yoon present

South Korea's constitutional court on Tuesday held the seventh hearing of the impeachment trial of President Yoon Suk-yeol, with the arrested president being present for the fifth time.

Dressed as before in a suit and red necktie, Yoon presented himself at the courtroom in central Seoul at around 10:00 a.m. local time (0100 GMT).

He said in the hearing that he made an emergency martial law declaration and took follow-up measures with the authority of the president guaranteed under the constitution.

Martial law can be imposed when the country faces "a state of war, serious incident or other comparable national emergency" that leads to engagement with the enemy or extreme disturbance of social order.

The opposition bloc denounced Yoon for unconstitutionally imposing martial law, as no sign of a national emergency was detected at the time of his declaration.

Yoon told the court justices that no one was dragged out or arrested, and no one was suppressed or attacked by soldiers when martial law was declared on the night of December 3 last year.

Throughout the midnight hours of the short-lived martial law imposition, which was lifted by the opposition-led National Assembly hours later, military helicopters landed at the National Assembly and hundreds of armed special forces troops broke into the parliamentary building, TV footage showed.

During the previous hearing, Colonel Kim Hyun-tae, chief of the Army Special Warfare Command's 707th Special Mission Group, stressed that when the special forces tussled with citizens inside and outside the National Assembly building, the troops only defended, not attacked, as they felt a lot of shame.

Yoon repeatedly claimed that he ordered the then-defense minister and the martial law commander to withdraw troops from the National Assembly and other targets.

However, Lieutenant General Kwak Jong-keun, former chief of the Army Special Warfare Command, said in the previous hearing that neither Yoon nor the defense minister gave him any withdrawal orders.

Lee Sang-min, former interior minister, told the justices that Yoon never gave him any orders to cut off power and water to left-leaning media outlets, including MBC, JTBC, Hankyoreh and Kyunghyang Shinmun, as well as local pollster Flower Research.

Lee's testimony was in contrast to the prosecution's indictment showing that Yoon gave such orders to Lee around midnight on December 3 last year.

The eighth and final hearing was scheduled to be held on Thursday, though the constitutional court could designate additional hearing dates.

The motion to impeach Yoon was passed through the National Assembly on December 14 last year and delivered to the constitutional court to deliberate it for up to 180 days, during which Yoon's presidential power is suspended.

Yoon was apprehended in the presidential office on January 15, becoming the country's first sitting president to be arrested.

Yoon, who was named as a suspected ringleader of insurrection, was indicted under detention on January 26, becoming the country's first incumbent president to be put on trial in custody.

Yoon was accused of conspiring with the former defense minister, who had already been indicted under detention, to declare unconstitutional, illegal martial law and dispatch armed forces into the National Assembly.