[Yonhap]
[Yonhap]

By Park Hye-won, The Herald Business

Police have moved to detain senior officials of the People's Democracy Party who are under investigation for alleged violations of the National Security Act.

The People's Democracy Party said in a press release Saturday that the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office requested arrest warrants Friday against party leader Han Myeong-hee and Secretary-General Han Jun-hye. The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency had applied for the warrants Thursday on suspicion of forming an anti-state organization under the National Security Act.

Pre-detention hearings for the two are scheduled for Monday — one at 10 a.m. and another at 3 p.m.

The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency's security investigation unit has been probing the People's Democracy Party for potential National Security Act violations since 2024. Police searched the party's offices in August of that year and summoned the party leader and members for questioning as suspects in July last year.

Investigators suspect the officials formed a pro-North Korea organization and engaged in activities deemed beneficial to an enemy state — including staging rallies demanding the withdrawal of US troops and denouncing joint South Korea-US military exercises as "a rehearsal for a northward invasion war."

Article 7 of the National Security Act stipulates a prison term of up to seven years for praising, encouraging or propagandizing the activities of an anti-state organization or anyone acting under its orders, and a sentence of at least one year for those who form or join such a group.

The People's Democracy Party pushed back, saying the case was "orchestrated by the forces behind Yoon Suk Yeol's insurrection to suppress critics of the regime as they planned and carried out the insurrection." The party called it "an inversion of cause and effect" to prosecute party officials who were themselves victims of the insurrection by recasting them as perpetrators.


klee@heraldcorp.com