South Korea's Supreme Court on Thursday confirmed a seven-year prison sentence for former president Yoon Suk Yeol, ruling on charges related to his botched declaration of martial law in December 2024. The court dismissed all appeals, with a judge stating in a televised ruling that the lower court's judgment "contained no errors." The decision is final under South Korean law.

The charges in this case centred on Yoon's conduct in the lead-up to and immediate aftermath of his surprise late-night martial law declaration on December 3, 2024 — an announcement that suspended civilian rule for roughly six hours before lawmakers convened an emergency session and voted it down. Prosecutors accused Yoon of obstructing cabinet deliberations by convening only a select group of ministers before the declaration, creating and later destroying a false martial law decree bearing the forged signature of the prime minister, directing officials to distribute a misleading press release to foreign media, and ordering an army commander to delete records from secure military phones. He was also accused of using presidential security agents to physically obstruct his own arrest after a warrant had been issued. A lower court convicted him on most charges in January and sentenced him to five years; an appeals court raised the sentence to seven years in April after adding a further guilty verdict. Prosecutors had sought ten years.

Yoon's legal team said it had "deep regret" over the ruling, arguing the court had concluded the case "without sufficient deliberation," and announced plans to challenge it on constitutional grounds. Yoon himself has consistently maintained that his martial law declaration was motivated by the public interest and the need to root out what he described as "anti-state forces."

This ruling is one of several major legal proceedings the former president faces. Yoon is already in detention while appealing a separate life sentence handed down for leading an insurrection — the core charge arising from the martial law declaration itself. In yet another case, a court sentenced him to 30 years for allegedly sending drones into North Korea in a move prosecutors characterised as an attempt to manufacture a security crisis ahead of the martial law bid.

The martial law episode sent South Korea's financial markets tumbling, triggered widespread street protests, and caught key allies including the United States off-guard. Yoon was removed from office in April 2025, and the subsequent presidential election brought Lee Jae Myung of the centre-left Democratic Party to power. The Supreme Court's ruling marks a significant, if not final, milestone in a political and legal crisis that has gripped one of Asia's largest democracies for more than a year.