In a case that has reignited scrutiny of South Korea’s most turbulent recent politics, former president Yoon Suk Yeol has been sentenced to 30 years in prison over allegations that he ordered drones flown into North Korea to help manufacture a crisis ahead of his ill-fated 2024 martial law declaration.
Special prosecutors said in April that Yoon’s bid to “fabricate wartime conditions” through the drone operation compromised state security.
The new prison term follows an earlier punishment: Yoon was sentenced to life in jail for leading an insurrection intended to “paralyse” South Korea’s National Assembly through the martial law declaration.
A spokesperson for the Seoul Central District Court told journalists that Yoon was “given 30 years in jail” on the drone-related charges, but provided no further details.
Prosecutors also contended that the mission inflamed tensions with North Korea and triggered a leak of classified information — including details about force capabilities — after drones crashed, according to the Yonhap news agency.
Yoon has appealed the insurrection conviction, maintaining that he declared martial law “solely for the sake of the nation”.
His legal team rejected the drone allegations, saying there was “no prior order or subsequent approval” from Yoon for the operation cited by prosecutors.
They argued the flights were prompted by North Korea’s dispatch of trash-carrying balloons across the border that year and described the drone activity as “a legitimate act of self-defence” unrelated to Yoon’s martial law declaration.
Yoon’s lawyers dismissed the prosecution narrative as a “speculative and false novel”.
Drone incursions remain a sensitive flashpoint on the peninsula, where the two Koreas are technically still at war.
Earlier this year, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung expressed regret after an investigation concluded that government officials had sent drones into the nuclear-armed North in January.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s influential sister praised Lee’s remarks as “wise behaviour”, but any momentum toward a thaw ebbed when the diplomatically isolated country again branded the South its “most hostile” enemy.
