According to Reuters, a Seoul court sentenced impeached former president Yoon Suk Yeol to 30 years in prison, finding him guilty of aiding an enemy state and abuse of power in connection with an unauthorized drone operation over Pyongyang in October 2024. The verdict adds a second major conviction to his legal record: he already faces a life sentence on insurrection charges stemming from his December 2024 martial law declaration. Both cases are under appeal.
The court ruled that Yoon had personally orchestrated the incursion from the outset, directing military assets into North Korean airspace to provoke a retaliatory response from Pyongyang — a response he planned to use as justification for declaring martial law two months later, on Dec. 3. The sentence matched the prison term requested by the special prosecutor’s office.
Kim Yong-hyun, who served as defense minister at the time of the drone operation, was also convicted and sentenced to 30 years, exceeding the 25-year term prosecutors had sought. Two other senior military officials received separate sentences: Yeo In-hyung, the former head of the Defense Counterintelligence Command, was sentenced to 15 years; Kim Yong-dae, the former drone operations commander, received a three-year suspended sentence with a five-year probation period.
Court finds drones were a pretext for martial law, not a legitimate military response
According to Yonhap News Agency, the court stated: “In order to create conditions for martial law, the defendants decided to use the military tactic of psychological warfare to incite North Korea and induce a provocation, and use that to prompt an armed provocation, such as a local conflict, or create a national security crisis situation resulting from heightened military tension.”
The court found that the operation “betrayed” the basic trust citizens place in a president and defense minister to deploy military force only for legitimate purposes.
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The court further found that exposing South Korean military assets to North Korea through the operation had the concrete effect of enhancing the North’s defensive and preparedness capabilities, causing material harm to South Korean national security.
Background: North Korea accused Seoul of drone flights over Pyongyang
North Korean authorities publicly accused South Korea of dispatching drones into Pyongyang’s airspace and dropping political leaflets over the capital on three separate occasions in October 2024. Kim Yong-hyun initially denied the allegations outright. The South Korean defense ministry later retreated from that position, saying it could “neither confirm nor deny” the claims. The episode sharply escalated inter-Korean tensions, though it stopped short of military conflict.
Defense lawyers argued that the drone flights were a lawful military response to North Korea’s sustained “trash balloon” campaign, in which Pyongyang had been sending balloons laden with garbage and waste across the border into South Korean territory for months. They also contended that Yoon had neither ordered the operation in advance nor approved it after the fact, characterizing the special prosecutor’s theory of the case as “fabricated lies built on speculation.”
Second major conviction as Yoon pursues multiple appeals
On the night of Dec. 3, 2024, Yoon appeared on national television and declared martial law, accusing opposition lawmakers of being “anti-state forces” and citing the parliamentary blocking of government budget proposals and the impeachment of senior officials as his stated grounds for the emergency measure.
Martial law lasted roughly six hours. Members of the National Assembly broke through military and police cordons surrounding the building, convened an emergency session, and voted to rescind the declaration, forcing the government to lift it before dawn.
The legislature impeached Yoon; South Korea’s Constitutional Court upheld the impeachment and removed him from office, triggering an early presidential election. Lee Jae-myung, the candidate of the liberal Democratic Party of Korea, won that election and became the country’s new president.
Yoon remains in detention. He was sentenced to life in prison in February 2026 on insurrection charges arising from the martial law declaration, and that conviction is currently under appeal. He has indicated he will also appeal Friday’s 30-year sentence. Prosecutors and defense lawyers have both filed appeals in the core insurrection case.
