[Anchor]
Today (October 27), the Supreme Court and the National Assembly have been in a literal whirlwind of activity. Let's start with the Supreme Court, where an additional arrest warrant has been issued for Kim Keon-hee.
Reporter Park Jae-yeon, what is the decisive reason for this additional arrest warrant?
[Reporter]
Yes, Division 2 of the Supreme Court issued an additional arrest warrant for Kim at around 6:30 p.m. a short while ago.
The court explained the reason for issuing the warrant, stating that "there is a risk of destroying evidence or fleeing."
Kim was indicted in August of last year over three major allegations—namely, the Deutsch Motors stock manipulation, the Unification Church bribery, and the Myeong Tae-gyun opinion poll controversies—and has been on trial in custody for 14 months.
Kim's detention period related to the trial for these three allegations is scheduled to expire on October 31. However, the special counsel requested that Division 2 of the Supreme Court, which is handling a separate trial regarding office-selling allegations, issue an arrest warrant ex officio, and the court issued the additional warrant today.
[Anchor]
Kim Keon-hee did not personally appear in court today, did she?
[Reporter]
Today's hearing took place behind closed doors for about 40 minutes starting at 2:30 p.m.
Kim's defense attorneys and special counsel assistant prosecutors representing the independent counsel attended the session.
[Chae Myung-sung / Defense attorney for Kim Keon-hee: We thoroughly presented our arguments that there are no grounds for detention and that this separate detention is unfair.]
[Kim Han-soo / Assistant special counsel for the Kim Keon-hee independent counsel: We argued whether there are grounds for detention prescribed by law and stated that those grounds are sufficient.]
Kim participated in the hearing via video link from the detention center where she is incarcerated, and she reportedly expressed that her "health is poor and she wants to receive treatment outside."
However, with the extension of her detention period during the trial due to the additional arrest warrant, the possibility of Kim Keon-hee being released before the sentencing has decreased.
(Video filming: Cho Chang-hyun, Yang Hyun-chul | Video editing: Kim Jun-hee)
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