South Korea's anti-corruption agency has requested that police take over efforts to detain impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol after its investigators failed to bring him to custody following a standoff with the presidential security service last week.

Dozens of anti-corruption agency investigators and assisting police officers attempted to detain the impeached president on Friday but retreated from his residence in Seoul after a tense five-hour standoff with the presidential security service.

South Korean investigators on Friday were attempting to detain impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol over his short-lived martial law decree last month, as hundreds of his supporters gathered at his residence in Seoul,