South Korea indicts ex-leader Yoon over power plot provoking North

Prosecutors have indicted former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol for insurrection, accusing him of seeking to provoke military aggression from North Korea to help consolidate his power.

Special prosecutor Cho Eun-seok told a briefing on Monday that his team had indicted Yoon, five former cabinet members, and 18 others on insurrection charges, following a six-month probe into his declaration of martial law last year.

“To create justification for declaring martial law, they tried to lure North Korea into mounting an armed aggression, but failed as North Korea did not respond militarily,” Cho said.

Yoon plunged South Korea into a crisis when he declared martial law in December 2024, prompting protesters and lawmakers to swarm parliament to force a vote against the measure.

The decree was quickly declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, and Yoon was subsequently impeached, removed from office, and jailed.

Martial law plotted for more than a year

Cho, one of three independent counsels appointed by South Korea’s current president, Lee Jae Myung, to investigate the martial law declaration, said Yoon and his supporters in the military had plotted since at least October 2023 to introduce the measure.

The plan involved installing collaborators in key military posts and removing a defence minister who opposed the scheme, Cho said.

The group even held dinner parties to build support for the plan among military leaders, he added.

Cho said Yoon, his Defence Minister Kim Yong Hyun, and Yeo In-hyung, commander of the military’s counterintelligence agency at the time, had directed military activities against North Korea since October 2024, seeking to provoke an aggressive response that would justify the declaration of martial law.

Yoon was indicted last month for ordering drone flights carrying propaganda leaflets into the North to inflame tensions – prompting his successor, Lee, to say earlier this month that he was weighing an apology to Pyongyang.

‘Antistate forces’

Cho said the provocations did not draw the expected reaction from North Korea, most likely because Pyongyang was tied up in supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine.

But Yoon pressed ahead regardless, he said, branding his political opponents – including the liberal-controlled legislature and the then-leader of his own conservative People Power Party – as “anti-state forces” in a bid to justify his actions.

Under South Korean law, insurrection is punishable by life in prison or the death penalty.

Yoon, who has been in jail since July following a stint in custody earlier in the year, insists that his martial law declaration was intended to draw public support for his fight against the opposition Democratic Party, which was abusing its control of parliament to cripple the work of the government.