South Korea Investigators in Standoff to Arrest President

 who has already been suspended from duty by lawmakers, would become the first sitting president in South Korean history to be arrested if the warrant is carried out.

The president, who issued a bungled declaration on December 3 that shook the vibrant East Asian democracy and briefly lurched it back to the dark days of military rule, faces imprisonment or, at worst, the death penalty.

"The execution of the arrest warrant for President Yoon Suk Yeol has begun," said the Corruption Investigation Office (CIO), which is probing Yoon's short-lived declaration of martial law, with its officials and police seen entering the president's residence.

CIO investigators including senior prosecutor Lee Dae-hwan were let through heavy security barricades to enter the residence to attempt to execute their warrant to detain Yoon, AFP reporters saw.

But they were "blocked by a military unit inside" after entering, the Yonhap news agency reported.

They later "moved past" that unit to "confront security service" members inside the residence.

It had been unclear whether the Presidential Security Service, which still protects Yoon as the country's sitting head of state, would comply with investigators' warrants.

Members of his security team have previously blocked attempted police raids of the presidential residence, but it was not immediately clear which units had blocked investigators Friday.

Yoon's legal team decried the attempt to execute the arrest warrant, vowing to take further legal action against the move.

"The execution of a warrant that is illegal and invalid is indeed not lawful," Yoon's lawyer Yoon Kap-keun said.