Ex-South Korean President Yoon sentenced to life imprisonment over martial law bid

Former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Seoul Central District Court for attempting to impose martial law in 2024, in a case deemed an insurrection, though prosecutors had sought the death penalty

Seoul: A court on Thursday sentenced former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol to life in prison for his failed bid to impose martial law in 2024. In the first ruling on the case, the Seoul Central District Court convicted Yoon of leading an insurrection through the martial law bid but handed down a sentence lighter than the death penalty recommended by special prosecutors, Yonhap News Agency reported.

The court made clear the martial law order amounted to an insurrection as the former president sought to cripple the National Assembly by sending troops to the parliamentary compound. It stressed multiple times that at the core of the case was Yoon’s deployment of troops to the National Assembly. The hearing was attended by the jailed former president and broadcast live on national television.

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Yoon was indicted in January last year on charges of leading an insurrection through his brief imposition of martial law on December 3, 2024, which lasted six hours.

According to his indictment, Yoon conspired with former Defence Minister Kim Yong-hyun and others to stage a riot aimed at subverting the Constitution and illegally declared martial law in the absence of war or an equivalent national emergency. During the trial’s final hearing last month, special counsel Cho Eun-suk’s team requested the death penalty for the former president, saying he deserved the maximum sentence for declaring martial law “with the purpose of remaining in power for a long time by seizing the judiciary and legislature.”

“The nature of the crime is serious as he mobilised physical resources that should have been used only in the interest of the national collective,” the team said. Yoon reiterated his claim of innocence in his final statement, arguing that the exercise of a president’s constitutional state emergency right cannot constitute an insurrection.

“It was not a military dictatorship that suppresses citizens, but an effort to safeguard freedom and sovereignty, and revive the constitutional order,” he said.