Police on Friday requested an arrest warrant against the head of a union coordination group for staging a mass rally last month in violation of COVID-19 rules.

Yang Kyung-soo, head of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, was accused of organizing the rally in downtown Seoul on July 3 in defiance of a COVID-19 ban by the city government and the police.

About 8,000 people attended the event, according to the KCTU, to demand improved working conditions.

Sources told the Yonhap News Agency that police requested the arrest warrant on Friday, two days after questioning him for more than five hours.

“We have determined that this is a serious crime, given that he organized a large-scale rally under the dangerous circumstances of a spread of an infectious disease,” said a police official. .

“We applied for (the warrant) after doing a full review of the risk of recidivism.”

Police said Yang’s arrest was also sought in connection with previous KCTU rallies in May and June.

Yang appeared at the Jongno Police Station on Wednesday after rejecting three previous summons.

He is accused of violating the Law on Gatherings and Protests and the Law on the Control and Prevention of Infectious Diseases, as well as disrupting traffic.

Police reserved a total of 23 people at the July 3 rally and questioned 19 on Friday.

Three KCTU members tested positive for the coronavirus around two weeks after the rally, raising concerns that the virus has spread to other attendees. However, the government later announced that the infections came from a restaurant the three men had visited four days after the protest. (Yonhap)