Ex-President Yoon Suk Yeol sentenced to 30 years over North Korea drone operation

In a watershed decision, a South Korean court has sentenced former President Yoon Suk Yeol to 30 years in prison for sending military drones into North Korea.

Prosecutors argued that Yoon ordered the operation in 2024 to deliberately provoke Pyongyang and create a major reason for his failed martial law bid later that year.

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Yoon was “given 30 years in jail” for the charges involving the drones, a spokesperson for the Seoul Central District said on Friday without providing more details.

The ruling argues for a series of rulings against the right-wing figurehead, once South Korea’s top prosecutor, whose material law order plunged Asia’s fourth-largest economy into its deepest political turmoil in decades.

Crucially, a South Korean court sentenced Yoon to life in prison after declaring him guilty of leading an insurrection linked to the martial law attempt. 

Yoon’s lawyers said that he neither ordered nor authorized the drone flight which they said were entirely unrelated to the martial law and were instead a response to months of North Korean rubbish-balloon launches across the border.

The drone incursions remain a political standoff between the two Koreas which remain technically the prime reason at war.

Earlier this year, Lee felt ashamed due to intense security following an investigation that found government officials had sent drones into the nuclear-equipped North Korea in January. Conversely, Yoon was also sentenced to five years in jail for impeding his own arrest apart from insurrection.

In addition, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s sister called Lee’s statement: “wise behaviour but hopes for a rapprochement faded after the diplomatically isolated nation returned to calling South Korea its most hostile economy.”