First lady Kim Keon Hee’s absence at an opposition-led parliamentary hearing on Friday sparked a protest by opposition parties, while the ruling party came to her defense.

Kim and her mother failing to appear as witnesses at the hearing organized by the National Assembly’s Legislation and Judiciary Committee Friday morning, to review an online petition with some 1.4 million signatures calling for the impeachment of her husband President Yoon Suk Yeol.

The impeachment motion against Yoon cited five allegations, including the first lady’s alleged involvement in a stock price manipulation case and her alleged acceptance of a luxury Dior bag in violation of antigraft law.

Kim and her 77-year-old mother, Choi Eun-soon, were among the 24 witnesses summoned by the committee to testify at Friday's hearing, alongside current presidential chief of staff Chung Jin-suk and Prosecutor General Lee One-seok. Eighteen of the total 24 witnesses including Kim, Choi, Chung and Lee failed to appear at the hearing or file official statements with the reason for their absence, according to the main opposition party.

The presidential office had not released any statement explaining the reason behind Kim's absence as of 3 p.m., though the ruling People Power Party denounced the hearing as an attempt to “publicly shame” the first lady, in a statement released in the afternoon.

“National Assembly Legislation and Judiciary Committee Chair Rep. Jung Chung-rae and the Democratic Party of Korea have decided to put on a political show to stir up the crowd by (protesting in front of the presidential residence) on top of pushing ahead with a hearing that does not correspond with the conditions and procedures of (presidential) impeachment under the Constitution,” the People Power Party's statement read.

“It is an attempt to blame the president for the hearing (with the majority of the witnesses failing to attend), by rushing to (the presidential residence in) Yongsan, after planning to publicly shame first lady Kim and her mother alongside the presidential chief of staff and the prosecutor general in a hearing that resembles one in North Korea," it said.

Meanwhile, a group of Democratic and other opposition party lawmakers protested in front of the presidential residence in Yongsan-gu, Seoul, following Kim's failure to appear to testify, calling on the first lady and her mother to attend the parliamentary hearing.

The Democratic Party announced plans to push forward with summoning the first lady and her mother to testify at a separate hearing in the future for a different case.

The hearing follows the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office move on Sunday to summon and grill the first lady for 12 hours over her alleged involvement in a stock price manipulation scheme involving Deutsch Motors, an imported car distributor, since the early 2010s, and her acceptance of a luxury Dior bag valued at 3 million won ($2,163) from a Korean-American pastor in 2022, caught on a hidden camera.

The move marked the first time prosecutors summoned a current first lady for an investigation and their first in-person questioning of Kim over the allegations. It also sparked speculations that the first lady was receiving preferential treatment by undergoing questioning at a venue outside of the prosecution's office.

On Monday, Prosecutor General Lee One-seok apologized to the public, saying that holding such an interrogation outside the prosecutor's office had undermined the rule of law, but that he hadn't been briefed about the case until it was nearly over.