Jurist South Korea prosecutors seek 30-year sentence for ex-president for attempting to provoke North Korea attack

[Dadparvar]

A special counsel team in South Korea isseeking a 30-year prison sentence for former president Yoon Suk Yeol on charges of “benefiting the enemy” after allegedly ordering the dispatch of military drones over the North Korean capital city, Pyongyang, in 2024.

The former president is accused of sending over 10 drones to North Korea from October to November of 2024 to provoke a North Korean attack on the South. The special counsel team argues that the so called “Pyongyang Drone Infiltration Operation” heightened military tensions between the two Koreas and risked leaking military secrets after the drones crashed in the North. The special counsel team also requested Friday that former Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun be sentenced to 25 years on the same allegation.

Following the sentencing hearing Friday, the former president’s defense team held a press conference, making similar arguments to those which were made in their defense:

The military’s response operation to North Korea’s garbage balloon provocation was a legitimate exercise of self-defense and has no relation to martial law. … It has not harmed any military interests of the Republic of Korea. Nevertheless, the special counsel’s attempt to link this to martial law is speculative and baseless. The act of the political special counsel investigating and indicting the military’s operation in response to North Korea’s provocation is not only self-harm to South Korea’s security but also a treasonous act that weakens national defense, causes a rift in the South Korea-US alliance, and benefits North Korea.

The special counsel team is led by Cho Eun-Suk, who is one of three independent counsel ordered by the current president to investigate the 2024 martial law imposition, corruption allegations involving Yoon and his wife, and the death of a marine in 2023. Cho is the former acting chief of the Board of Audit and Inspection who is in charge of investigating a series of charges relating to the December 2024 imposition of martial law.

The former president was sentenced to life imprisonment in February after the Seoul Central District Court found him guilty of leading an insurrection. On December 3, 2024, Yoon declared martial law under Article 77 of the Constitution. He justified the declaration “to protect the free Republic of Korea from the threat of North Korean communist forces.” Yoon was subsequently impeached by the National Assembly and later dismissed from his office following a ruling by the Constitutional Court of Korea “on the grounds that he violated the Constitution and statutes in the course of performing his official duties and that such violations were grave.”

Yoon was also sentenced to five years in prison in January on obstruction charges. Yoon is the first president in South Korean history to be arrested while in office.

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