Former South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol arrives at a court in Seoul on July 9, 2025.Kim Hong-Ji/The Associated Press
A South Korean court on Thursday sentenced former president Yoon Suk Yeol to life in prison over his December, 2024, imposition of martial law, which judges deemed an insurrection aimed at overthrowing the country’s constitutional order.
A conservative former prosecutor, Mr. Yoon declared military rule after opposition lawmakers used their parliamentary majority to repeatedly block his agenda and launch corruption investigations into Mr. Yoon and his wife.
Late in the evening on Dec. 3, 2024, Mr. Yoon ordered troops to the National Assembly to arrest those he called “shameless pro-North Korean anti-state forces, who are plundering the freedom and happiness of our citizens.”
But communication delays and confusion in the chain of command gave both opposition lawmakers and those in Mr. Yoon’s own party enough time to call a vote in the Assembly. They unanimously overturned the president’s edict, ending martial law just six hours after it was declared.
Less than two weeks later, lawmakers voted to impeach Mr. Yoon. Last April, that measure was approved by South Korea’s Constitutional Court, setting the stage for a snap presidential election that Mr. Yoon’s nemesis, former opposition leader Lee Jae-myung, won handily.
Since then, prosecutors have pursued numerous charges against Mr. Yoon and other top officials involved in his attempted coup. In January, Mr. Yoon’s prime minister, Han Duck-soo, was found guilty of insurrection and sentenced to 23 years in prison. Ahead of Thursday’s verdict, Mr. Yoon, too, had already received a five-year sentence for obstructing investigations into the martial law decree.
Yoon's lawyers said that the Seoul court ignored the principle of basing findings on evidence.
Reuters
Cho Eun-suk, a special prosecutor in Mr. Yoon’s case, had called for him to face the death penalty, but the court rejected this and instead sentenced the 65-year-old to life in prison.
The panel of three judges said while the imposition of martial law is permissible under the constitution, and did not amount to an insurrection in and of itself, it was clear Mr. Yoon had sought – unsuccessfully – to block the National Assembly from exercising its oversight, ordering the barricading of the building and arrest of key lawmakers.
“It is difficult to deny that former President Yoon aimed to make the National Assembly unable to function properly for a considerable period,” lead judge Jee Kui-youn said during proceedings Thursday, according to South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency.
“Yoon planned the crime personally and in a leading role and involved many people in the crime. The emergency martial law incurred an enormous social cost, and the defendant hardly expressed an apology for that.”
Indeed, Mr. Yoon initially defied calls for him to resign or submit to investigations, rallying right-wing supporters around him and barricading himself in his residence against police.
His conviction Thursday is sure to further inflame hardline conservatives in South Korea, some of whom have adopted Mr. Yoon as an almost martyr-like figure. They accuse President Lee – who enjoys high approval with the general public – of being a leftist authoritarian and an agent of North Korea, charges that are often laid by the right against liberal South Korean politicians.
Mr. Yoon’s impeachment and imprisonment echo that of former conservative president Park Geun-hye, who was removed from office in late 2016 over a sprawling corruption scandal. He also joins the list of South Korean leaders jailed for various reasons after leaving office. That list includes Ms. Park’s predecessor, fellow conservative Lee Myung-bak, who was sentenced to 15 years for bribery in 2018, but received a pardon from Mr. Yoon in 2022.
According to Yonhap, the courtroom that hosted Thursday’s proceedings was the same one where former president Chun Doo-hwan was sentenced to death in 1996 for his role in a 1979 coup and subsequent violent suppression of a pro-democracy movement. His sentence was later commuted to life in prison, before he was pardoned in 1997.
In a statement, Amnesty International, which had strongly criticized prosecutors’ decision to request the death penalty, said Mr. Yoon’s conviction was an “important step towards accountability which demonstrates that no one is above the law.”
“South Korea’s independent courts and citizen resistance have shown how the rule of law and strong institutional checks can effectively counter authoritarian practices,” said Amnesty’s deputy regional director Sarah Brooks.
Ahead of Thursday’s verdict, President Lee, who livestreamed himself in 2024 climbing over the walls of the National Assembly to vote down martial law, responded to calls for those who helped stop the insurrection to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Their resistance, he wrote on social media, “will serve as a model for human history,” adding, “this was possible because it was the Republic of Korea.”