Yoon Suk Yeol Sentenced to 30 Years for Ordering Drone Attack on North Korea

A South Korean court sentenced former president Yoon Suk Yeol to 30 years in prison on Friday after finding him guilty of ordering a drone attack on North Korea. The instruction was deemed to have deliberately heightened cross-border tensions to create a pretext for declaring martial law in December 2024. Former defence minister Kim Yong Hyun, who was tried alongside Yoon, was also handed a 30-year prison term. The judge ruled that the defendants intentionally sought to manufacture a national emergency to serve as the basis for imposing martial rule. “This directly contradicts the purpose for which the authority to declare martial law in emergency conditions was granted to the defendants. By disguising it as a legitimate military operation, they exploited soldiers for personal gain and betrayed the fundamental trust that military force should be used for lawful purposes,” the court stated. The bench added that the resulting damage to that trust would hinder the swift execution of future military operations. Prosecutors had previously sought a 30-year sentence for Yoon and a 25-year term for Kim. In February, Yoon was already sentenced to life imprisonment for being the mastermind behind an insurrection through the short-lived martial law decree. He remains in detention while facing several other trials.