A South Korean court has sentenced jailed former President Yoon Suk Yeol to 30 more years for sending drones into North Korea.
A Spokesperson for the Seoul Central District said that Yoon was “given 30 years in jail” for the charges involving the drones.
The Seoul District Court found Yoon, as well as his former Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun, former Head of the Defense Counterintelligence Command Yeo In-hyung and former Head of Drone Operations Commands Kim Yong-dae guilty of treason and abuse of power.
Kim was sentenced to 30 years in jail, while Yeo received 15 years and Kim Yong-dae received three years in prison with a five-year suspended sentence. “The defendants used the guise of a military operation to induce provocations from North Korea with the aim of creating a state of emergency,” the court said.
It added that all three officials had “provoked North Korea,” thus “increasing the risk of a military conflict” but concluded that Yoon bore the “greatest responsibility” in this event.
Special prosecutors, who had sought a 30-year prison term for Yoon, said in April that the ex-leader’s effort to “fabricate wartime conditions” with the drones had undermined state security.
Prosecutors argued that Yoon’s move was aimed at creating a pretext for his disastrous martial law declaration in 2024. The drone flights, which Pyongyang said included the dropping of propaganda leaflets, triggered a spike in military tensions between the nations in October 2024.
Yoon had denied wrongdoing. Yoon’s lawyers said that he neither ordered nor later approved the drone operation, which they said was unrelated to martial law and instead a response to months of North Korean launches across the border of balloons stuffed with rubbish.
Drone flights remain a flashpoint in tensions between the two Koreas, which remain technically at war.
Yoon’s lawyers had argued that his actions were a “legitimate” response to North Korea’s “provocations with rubbish balloons.”
This was a reference to North Korea dropping hundreds of balloons in 2024, which were later found to contain “filthy waste and trash”, across the border in the South. The two countries have used such “propaganda balloons” in their campaigns since the Korean War, where messages are put inside the balloons.
However, tensions shot up in 2024 when North Korea accused the South of flying drones into its capital. These drones allegedly scattered propaganda leaflets all over Pyongyang, in what the North described as a provocation that could lead to war. A judge said in today’s ruling that it was Yoon who sent these drones into the North expecting it to strike back.
Ruling Adds To Yoon’s Woes
The ruling adds to a series of judgements against the ousted conservative leader, once South Korea’s top prosecutor, whose martial law order plunged Asia’s fourth-largest economy into its deepest political turmoil in decades. Yoon is now serving time in prison after he was sentenced to life for insurrection over his botched martial law attempt.
In February, a South Korean court sentenced Yoon to life in prison after finding him guilty of leading an insurrection linked to the martial law attempt. Apart from insurrection, Yoon was also sentenced to five years in jail for abuse of power and obstructing his own arrest.
He was removed from office last year after the Constitutional Court upheld his impeachment, triggering a snap election that was won by liberal President Lee Jae Myung.
Lee expressed regret earlier this year after an investigation found government officials had sent drones into the nuclear-armed North Korea in January. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s powerful 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” enemy.
Yoon, who is already in custody, can appeal Friday’s lower court ruling.
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