A South Korean court on Friday sentenced former President Yoon Suk Yeol to 30 years in prison over charges linked to his ordering a military drone incursion over North Korea, an operation prosecutors said was designed to help create a pretext for his failed December 2024 martial law declaration.
The Seoul Central District Court found Yoon guilty of aiding the enemy and abuse of power, ruling he had conspired in the October 2024 drone operation over Pyongyang “from the outset,” according to a court statement reported by Reuters via Ada Derana.
Prosecutors had sought the 30-year term in April. In February, a separate court sentenced Yoon to life in prison after finding him guilty of leading an insurrection tied to the martial law attempt — making this his second major conviction in four months.
Yoon, once South Korea’s top prosecutor, denied any wrongdoing over the drone incursion. His lawyers said he had neither ordered nor later approved the operation, which they framed as an unrelated response to months of North Korean balloon launches dropping rubbish across the border, not a martial law pretext.
The ousted conservative leader was removed from office last year after the Constitutional Court upheld his impeachment, triggering a snap election won by liberal President Lee Jae Myung. Yoon, already in custody, can appeal Friday’s lower court ruling and has appealed his earlier convictions.
The conviction caps the most consequential single-week judicial reckoning of a sitting or former East Asian head of state in recent memory, plunging Asia’s fourth-largest economy into political turmoil for a second consecutive year and reinforcing the constitutional limits placed on emergency powers in the region’s mature democracies.
Source: Ada Derana — Reuters.
