Jailed South Korea ex-president gets 30 more years for sending drones into North
A South Korean court sentenced former President Yoon Suk Yeol to 30 years in prison for sending a drone to North Korea.
Prosecutors argued that Yoon ordered the operation in October 2024 to provoke Pyongyang and create a pretext for a failed martial law bid that year.
When Yoon declared martial law on December 3, he claimed he was protecting the country from “anti-state” forces sympathetic to North Korea. However, it soon became clear that it was due to internal problems and he withdrew the order in the face of mass protests.
Yoon was impeached and is currently serving time in prison after being sentenced to life imprisonment for rebellion over the failed attempt at martial law.
On Friday, the Seoul District Court found Yoon, as well as former defense minister Kim Yong-hyun, former Defense Counter-Intelligence Command chief Yeo In-hyung, and former Drone Operations Command chief Kim Yong-dae, guilty of treason and abuse of power.
Kim was sentenced to 30 years in prison, Yeo was sentenced to 15 years, and Kim Yong-dae was sentenced to three years in prison with a five-year suspended sentence.
“The defendants used the guise of a military operation to provoke North Korea’s provocations with the aim of creating a state of emergency,” the court said.
He added that all three officials “provoked North Korea”, thus “increasing the risk of military conflict”, but concluded that the “greatest responsibility” in this incident rested with Yoon.
Yoon’s lawyers argued that his actions were a “legitimate” response to North Korea’s “provocations with garbage balloons.”
This was a reference to North Korea dropping hundreds of balloons on the South’s border in 2024, which turned out to contain “filthy waste and garbage”.
The two countries have been using such “propaganda balloons”, in which messages are placed inside the balloons, in their campaigns since the Korean War.
But tensions escalated in 2024 when North Korea accused the South of flying drones into its capital. These drones allegedly distributed propaganda leaflets throughout Pyongyang in what the North described as a provocation that could lead to war.
In Friday’s ruling, a judge said it was Yoon who sent those drones to the North, expecting it to reciprocate.
In addition to the riot, Yoon was also sentenced to five years in prison for abusing authority and obstructing his own arrest.
Yoon’s attempt at martial law and the protests that followed created months of chaos in the country, culminating in an election in which Lee Jae-myung of the opposition Democratic Party won a decisive mandate.
