The former deputy chief of South Korea’s spy agency likened President Yoon Suk-yeol’s alleged order to arrest opposition politicians to the tactics of North Korean secret police on Wednesday, telling lawmakers that such arrests would make Seoul no different than Pyongyang.

Hong Jang-won, former deputy director of the National Intelligence Service (NIS), made the comparison while testifying before a special parliamentary committee investigating Yoon’s ill-fated declaration of martial law. 

He described receiving a direct presidential order from Yoon on Dec. 3 to “arrest them all and clean everything up” — instructions that he said he initially misinterpreted as targeting a