SEOUL, South Korea — An independent counsel on Tuesday demanded the death sentence for former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on rebellion charges in connection with his short-lived imposition of martial law in December 2024.
Yoon, who was removed from office last April and is in jail, faces eight trials over various criminal charges related to his martial law debacle and other scandals related to his time in office. Charges that he directed a rebellion are the most significant ones.
Independent counsel Cho Eun-suk’s team requested the Seoul Central District Court to sentence Yoon to death, according to the court, which is expected to deliver a verdict in February.
Experts say the court will likely sentence Yoon to life in prison. South Korea hasn’t executed anyone since 1997, and local courts rarely issue the death penalty in recent years.
Yoon, who was scheduled to make remarks at Tuesday’s hearing, has maintained that his decree was a desperate yet peaceful attempt to raise public awareness about what he considered the danger of the liberal opposition Democratic Party, which used its legislative majority to obstruct his agenda. He called the opposition-controlled parliament “a den of criminals” and “anti-state forces.”
Spectacular downfall
Yoon’s decree, the first of its kind in more than 40 years, brought armed troops into Seoul streets to encircle the assembly and enter election offices. That evoked traumatic memories of dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s, when military-backed rulers used martial law and other emergency decrees to station soldiers and armored vehicles in public places to suppress pro-democracy protests.
On the night of Yoon’s martial law declaration, thousands of people gathered at the National Assembly to object to the decree and demand his resignation. Enough lawmakers, including members of Yoon’s ruling party, managed to enter an assembly hall to vote down the decree.
Yoon’s decree and ensuing power vacuum plunged South Korea into political turmoil, halted the country’s high-level diplomacy and rattled its financial markets.
Observers described Yoon’s action as political suicide, marking a spectacular downfall for the former star prosecutor who won South Korea’s presidency in 2022, a year after entering politics. Parliament impeached him and sent the case to the Constitutional Court, which ruled to dismiss him as president.
Lee Jae Myung, a former Democratic Party leader who led Yoon’s impeachment bid, became president in a snap election last June. After taking office, Lee appointed three independent counsels to delve into allegations involving Yoon, his wife and associates.
The president’s office said Tuesday it expects the judiciary branch to rule on Yoon in line with the law, principle and public expectations.
There had been speculation that Yoon resorted to martial law to protect his wife, Kim Keon Hee, from potential corruption investigations. But in wrapping up a six-month investigation last month, independent counsel Cho’s team concluded that Yoon plotted for over a year to impose martial law to eliminate his political rivals and monopolize power.
Yoon’s earlier vows to fight attempts to impeach and arrest him deepened the country’s political divide. In January last year, he became the country’s first sitting president to be detained.
Other criminal trials
Yoon’s rebellion charges carry only the death sentence and life imprisonment, if convicted. But judges still have rights to mitigate them immediately. This means the Seoul court has three options on Yoon — issuing the death sentence as requested by Cho’s team, commuting it to life sentence or 20-50 years in prison, or acquitting him.
Cho’s team last month requested a 10-year prison term for Yoon’s earlier defiance of authorities’ attempts to execute his detainment warrant and other charges like abuse of power and falsification of official documents. Yoon’s lawyers accused Cho’s team of being politically driven and lacking legal grounds to demand such an “excessive” sentence.
Yoon’s other trials deal with charges like ordering drone flights over North Korea to deliberately inflame animosities to look for a pretext to declare martial law, and committing perjury in the trial of his prime minister. Other charges accuse Yoon of manipulating the investigation into a marine’s drowning in 2023 and receiving free opinion surveys from an election broker in return for a political favor.
Yoon denies all the charges.
Potential prison sentences that Yoon could receive in these trials could matter in the event that he avoids the death penalty or life imprisonment over his rebellion charges, said Park SungBae, a lawyer who specializes in criminal law.
Both Yoon and the independent counsel could appeal the rebellion case to a higher court and then the Supreme Court. Park said a verdict by the Supreme Court, the country’s top court, would likely come this year.
Kim writes for the Associated Press.
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