Get you up to speed: South Korea’s ex-President Yoon gets 30 years over drone operation
South Korea’s ex-President Yoon Suk Yeol was sentenced to 30 years in prison by the Seoul Central District Court for sending military drones into North Korea, which prosecutors claimed aimed to create a pretext for martial law in 2024. Yoon, who denied any wrongdoing and was already in custody, can appeal the ruling.
Investigations reveal that the drone flights into North Korea were part of a broader strategy that prosecutors claimed involved fabricating wartime conditions. The ruling by the Seoul Central District Court is part of a series of legal challenges faced by Yoon Suk Yeol, who remains in custody and plans to appeal the decision.
The Seoul Central District Court has sentenced former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol to 30 years in prison for his involvement in sending military drones into North Korea, with the prosecution describing the act as an attempt to create a pretext for his martial law declaration. Yoon’s defence asserts his non-involvement in the drone operation, and he remains in custody with plans to appeal the ruling.
What remains unclear — It is not specified how Yoon intends to proceed with his appeal against the ruling.
South Korea’s ex-President Yoon sentenced to 30 years for drone operation
News|PoliticsSouth Korea’s ex-President Yoon gets 30 years over drone operation
Seoul court sentences former leader for sending military drones into North Korea.
By AFP and ReutersPublished On 12 Jun 202612 Jun 2026
South Korea’s ex-President Yoon Suk Yeol has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for sending military drones into North Korea, a move prosecutors argued 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.
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.
Yoon was “given 30 years in jail” for the charges involving the drones, a spokesperson for the Seoul Central District Court told the AFP news agency on Friday, without giving further details.
Yoon had denied wrongdoing.
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.
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.
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.
Yoon’s lawyers said 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.
Yoon, who is already in custody, can appeal Friday’s lower court ruling.
Drone flights remain a flashpoint in tensions between the two Koreas, which remain technically at war.
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.
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