Seoul, Feb 6 (IANS): A former military commander of South Korea involved in President Yoon Suk Yeol's botched martial law bid confirmed on Thursday that the people Yoon ordered to be removed from the National Assembly were lawmakers, not agents.
Lt. Gen. Kwak Jong-keun, the then chief of the Army Special Warfare Command, made the remark as a witness during the sixth formal hearing of Yoon's impeachment trial at the Constitutional Court.
Yoon was also in attendance, reports Yonhap news agency.
"I obviously thought and understood the part about dragging people out from inside as referring to lawmakers because there were no operation agents inside the main (parliamentary) building at the time," Kwak said, referring to a phone call he received from Yoon on the night martial law was imposed on December 3.
Kwak was confirming testimony he has previously given in parliament, as former Defence Minister Kim Yong-hyun has disputed the claim, saying Yoon had in fact ordered the removal of agents, not lawmakers.
In Korean, the words for agent and lawmaker are similar in pronunciation.
Earlier during the hearing, Col. Kim Hyun-tae, head of the Army Special Warfare Command's 707th Special Mission Group, said he had been ordered to seal off and secure the National Assembly building while the decree was in force.
"The mission I received was to seal off and secure (the National Assembly)," he said, adding that he relayed the instruction to his troops.
He also recalled that in a phone call, he had with Kwak after his troops had entered the parliamentary building on the night of December 3, Kwak asked if they could go in further, "since there can't be more than 150 people."
Kim said he did not know at the time what the number 150 meant but later learned it was the minimum number of lawmakers needed to vote down Yoon's martial law decree.
When asked if he was instructed to "drag out" lawmakers, he said, "There was no such order and by my recollection even if there had been it wouldn't have worked."
Senior presidential secretary for economic affairs Park Chun-sup is also set to testify.
Park is expected to be asked about the opposition party's push to cut the government budget, which Yoon's side has cited as one of the reasons martial law was declared.