SEOUL: South Korea\u2019s ex-president Yoon Suk Yeol was sentenced to 30 years in prison on Friday for sending drones into North Korea, a move prosecutors argued was aimed at creating a pretext for his disastrous martial law declaration in 2024.<\/p>\n
Special prosecutors said back in April that Yoon\u2019s effort to \u201cfabricate wartime conditions\u201d with the drones had undermined state security.<\/p>\n
This sentence comes after Yoon was given life in jail in February for leading an insurrection to \u201cparalyze\u201d South Korea\u2019s National Assembly with his martial law declaration.<\/p>\n
Yoon was \u201cgiven 30 years in jail\u201d for the charges involving the drones, a spokesperson for the Seoul Central District Court told AFP Friday, without giving further details.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors had also argued that the operation heightened tensions with North Korea and led to the leak of classified information \u2014 including details about force capabilities \u2014 after the drones crashed, the Yonhap news agency reported.<\/p>\n
Yoon has appealed against the insurrection conviction, insisting that he declared martial law \u201csolely for the sake of the nation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yoon\u2019s legal team had denied the charge involving the drones and said there was \u201cno prior order or subsequent approval\u201d by him for the drone operation cited by prosecutors.<\/p>\n
They said the operation was in response to North Korea sending balloons carrying trash across the border that year and was \u201ca legitimate act of self-defense\u201d unrelated to Yoon\u2019s martial law declaration.<\/p>\n
His lawyers dismissed the prosecution\u2019s claims as a \u201cspeculative and false novel.\u201d<\/p>\n
Drone flights remain a flashpoint in tensions between the two Koreas, which remain technically at war.<\/p>\n
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung expressed regret earlier this year after an investigation found government officials had sent drones into the nuclear-armed North in January.<\/p>\n
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un\u2019s powerful sister called Lee\u2019s statement \u201cwise behavior,\u201d but hopes for a rapprochement faded after the diplomatically isolated nation returned to calling the South its \u201cmost hostile\u201d enemy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SEOUL: South Korea\u2019s ex-president Yoon Suk Yeol was sentenced to 30 years in prison on Friday for sending drones into North Korea, a move prosecutors argued was aimed at creating a pretext for his disastrous martial law declaration in 2024. Special prosecutors said back in April that Yoon\u2019s effort to \u201cfabricate wartime conditions\u201d with the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":98976,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98958"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98978,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98958\/revisions\/98978"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}