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Former South Korean president sentenced to life in prison for sedition

2026-02-19 17:52:12Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
Former South Korean president sentenced to life in prison for sedition
Yoon Suk Yeol

A South Korean court on Thursday sentenced former President Yoon Suk Yeol to life in prison with hard labor, finding him guilty of leading an uprising after the failed declaration of a state of emergency in December 2024. He is the first elected president in South Korea's democratic era to receive the maximum prison sentence.

Under South Korean law, the charge of leading an insurrection carries three possible sentences: death penalty, life imprisonment with hard labor, or life imprisonment without hard labor. The prosecution had sought the death penalty, arguing that Yoon committed “grave subversion of constitutional order” after mobilizing troops to surround parliament and attempting to arrest political opponents during the six-hour crisis.

Yoon denied any wrongdoing throughout the trial, calling the investigation a “political conspiracy.” He said he declared the state of emergency to warn citizens about what he called an unconstitutional parliamentary dictatorship by the then-opposition Democratic Party. He made unsubstantiated allegations of election fraud and said the opposition had paralyzed his government through budget cuts and impeachment proceedings.

According to Yoon, the troops deployed were minimal and largely unarmed, with no intention of suppressing parliament. His legal team argued that “there was no intention to disrupt the constitutional order and there was no insurrection.”

The ruling comes 14 months after events that were seen as the most serious threat to South Korea’s democracy in decades. The charges stem from the night of December 3, 2024, when prosecutors said Yoon tried to use the military to paralyze the legislature, arrest political opponents and seize control of the national election commission. Yoon said he was fighting “anti-state forces,” again without providing evidence of election fraud.

Within hours of the state of emergency being declared, 190 lawmakers broke through military and police cordons to pass an emergency resolution that repealed it. Parliament dismissed Yoon within 11 days, and the Constitutional Court removed him from office four months later.

Thursday’s ruling follows a series of related convictions that formally determined that the December 3 events constituted an uprising. In January, former Prime Minister Han Duck-soo was sentenced to 23 years in prison; the court described the attempted state of emergency as a “self-coup” by the elected government, more dangerous than traditional uprisings. On February 12, former Interior Minister Lee Sang-min was sentenced to seven years in prison for his role, which included passing on orders to cut off power and water to the media.

Legal experts said these decisions created a climate of punishment that made it more likely that the maximum sentence would be imposed on Yoon.

Former President Park Geun-hye was initially sentenced to a total of 32 years in prison for corruption in 2018, but her sentence was reduced on appeal and then overturned by presidential pardon in 2021. In 1996, military dictators Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo were sentenced to death and 22 and a half years in prison for their roles in the 1979 coup and the subsequent Gwangju massacre; the sentences were reduced on appeal and both were later pardoned.

Historically, every South Korean president who has served a prison sentence has been eventually pardoned.


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