On August 1, former Interior Minister Lee Sang-min was arrested in Seoul after a court issued a warrant tied to allegations that he played a role in former President Yoon Suk Yeol’s failed martial law attempt.
The Seoul Central District Court granted the warrant after a hearing in which special counsel Cho Eun-suk’s team argued Lee had a key role in the December episode. The warrant cited concerns that he could destroy evidence. According to Yonhap, Lee had already appeared in court the previous day to deny the charges before the warrant was issued hours later.
Prosecutors say Lee helped with the martial law bid by not actively stopping Yoon from declaring the decree and by instructing police and fire officials to cut off power and water to media outlets critical of the administration. The case also includes charges of insurrection-related conduct, abuse of power and perjury, making it one of the most serious legal threats yet to emerge from the aftermath of Yoon’s presidency.
Lee’s arrest is especially notable because he is the second Cabinet member from Yoon’s government to be detained in connection with the martial law episode, following former Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun. That detail highlights how the investigation has moved beyond Yoon himself and into the officials around him who allegedly helped sustain the decree or failed to resist it.
The source says Lee is being held at the Seoul Detention Center in Uiwang, just south of Seoul. That means the legal process now shifts from a warrant hearing to a deeper investigation in detention, with prosecutors able to continue examining his role while he remains in custody.
Lee’s lawyers have denied most of the allegations. But the court’s decision suggests it viewed the case as strong enough to justify arrest and continued detention. In practical terms, the ruling keeps Lee under legal pressure while investigators work to reconstruct what happened inside the Yoon administration when martial law was declared and then quickly unraveled.
The wider political significance is hard to miss. Yoon’s martial law attempt has already become a defining scandal of his presidency, and the arrest of a former interior minister shows how far the fallout continues to spread.
The arrest also shows how the special counsel’s case is widening from the original martial law decree to the behavior of the cabinet around it. Lee’s status as the second former minister to be detained after Kim Yong-hyun gives the investigation a pattern that looks less like isolated accountability and more like a systematic review of the Yoon administration’s crisis response. That makes the legal stakes broader than one warrant or one hearing.
For investigators, keeping Lee in custody preserves access and pressure while they continue reviewing what happened inside the government when the decree was issued and challenged. For the public, the warrant reinforces the sense that the martial law episode is not over simply because the decree failed. It has become a legal reckoning with consequences that now reach former ministers, not just the ex-president who issued the order.
