A Seoul court has sentenced former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol to 30 years in prison for ordering military drones to be flown into North Korea, ruling that the operation was deliberately designed to heighten cross-border tensions and manufacture a pretext for his short-lived martial law declaration in December 2024. The Seoul Central District Court found Yoon guilty of abuse of power and benefiting the enemy, concluding that he conspired in the October 2024 drone incursion from the outset. The sentence matched the recommendation made by special prosecutors.
According to the court, Yoon planned to provoke Pyongyang into an armed response or equivalent act, which would have created a national security crisis he could then use to justify suspending civilian rule. Judges said the operation "entailed the use of South Korea's military capabilities for private purposes" and amounted to a betrayal of the public's expectation that military force would be used only for legitimate ends. Former Defence Minister Kim Yong-hyun received the same 30-year sentence for his role in the operation, while former Defence Counterintelligence Command chief Yeo In-hyung was sentenced to 15 years. The former head of the Drone Operations Command received a three-year suspended sentence.
North Korea had accused Seoul in October 2024 of flying drones over Pyongyang and dropping propaganda leaflets, triggering a sharp spike in inter-Korean tensions. South Korea's defence ministry at the time initially denied the accusation before declining to confirm or deny it. Yoon's legal team argued throughout the trial that the drone flights were a legitimate military response to North Korea's repeated launches of balloons filled with rubbish and waste materials across the border — a practice Pyongyang has used as a form of psychological pressure. Yoon's lawyers have vowed to appeal the ruling, and Yoon himself has denied any wrongdoing.
Friday's verdict is the latest in a series of convictions against the ousted conservative leader, once South Korea's top prosecutor before entering politics. In February, a separate court sentenced Yoon to life in prison for leading an insurrection through his martial law declaration — a ruling he is also appealing. His dramatic late-night televised announcement suspending civilian rule in December 2024 lasted only around six hours before the National Assembly voted to overturn it in an emergency session, but it sent shockwaves through the country, rattled financial markets, and caught close allies including the United States off guard.
The case underscores the profound political turbulence that has gripped South Korea, Asia's fourth-largest economy, over the past year and a half. Yoon was removed from office after the Constitutional Court upheld his impeachment, triggering a snap election. Drone flights between the two Koreas — which remain technically at war following the 1950–53 Korean War armistice — continue to be a flashpoint, and a separate drone incident in January involving other government officials prompted the new administration to express regret, receiving a cautious but positive signal from North Korea before relations cooled once more.