Seoul, A court on Thursday sentenced former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol to life in prison for his failed bid to impose martial law in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the first ruling on the case, the Seoul Central District Court convicted Yoon of leading an insurrection through the martial law bid but handed down a sentence lighter than the death penalty recommended by special prosecutors, Yonhap News Agency reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The court made clear the martial law order amounted to an insurrection as the former president sought to cripple the National Assembly by sending troops to the parliamentary compound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It stressed multiple times that at the core of the case was Yoon’s deployment of troops to the National Assembly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The hearing was attended by the jailed former president and broadcast live on national television.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yoon was indicted in January last year on charges of leading an insurrection through his brief imposition of martial law on December 3, 2024, which lasted six hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to his indictment, Yoon conspired with former Defence Minister Kim Yong-hyun and others to stage a riot aimed at subverting the Constitution and illegally declared martial law in the absence of war or an equivalent national emergency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the trial’s final hearing last month, special counsel Cho Eun-suk’s team requested the death penalty for the former president, saying he deserved the maximum sentence for declaring martial law “with the purpose of remaining in power for a long time by seizing the judiciary and legislature.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe nature of the crime is serious as he mobilised physical resources that should have been used only in the interest of the national collective,\u201d the team said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yoon reiterated his claim of innocence in his final statement, arguing that the exercise of a president’s constitutional state emergency right cannot constitute an insurrection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt was not a military dictatorship that suppresses citizens, but an effort to safeguard freedom and sovereignty, and revive the constitutional order,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Seoul, A court on Thursday sentenced former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol to life in prison for his failed bid to impose martial law in 2024. In the first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-display","category-international","has_no_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsaxis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsaxis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsaxis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsaxis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsaxis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1703"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newsaxis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1704,"href":"https:\/\/newsaxis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1703\/revisions\/1704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsaxis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsaxis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsaxis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}