{"id":79973,"date":"2026-07-09T08:26:06","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T08:26:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/79973\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T08:26:06","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T08:26:06","slug":"south-koreas-top-court-upholds-7-year-sentence-for-ex-president-yoon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/79973\/","title":{"rendered":"South Korea’s top court upholds 7-year sentence for ex-president Yoon"},"content":{"rendered":"

South Korea<\/a>‘s highest court on Thursday upheld ex-president Yoon Suk Yeol<\/a>‘s seven-year prison sentence over crimes tied to his botched 2024 martial law declaration<\/a> and its chaotic aftermath.<\/p>\n

The case covered accusations that Yoon had obstructed cabinet deliberations and used forged signatures of the prime minister in the lead-up to the 2024 declaration, as well as using presidential security agents to block his own arrest after lawmakers had nullified it.<\/p>\n

The disgraced former president is already in detention<\/a> while he appeals a separate life sentence for leading an insurrection with his martial law<\/a> declaration, which he insists was motivated by the public interest.<\/p>\n

Read moreSouth Korea sentences ex-president Yoon to 30 years over North Korea drone incident<\/a><\/p>\n

In the case brought before the Supreme Court, Yoon was accused of obstructing deliberations by convening only a select group of ministers for a meeting shortly before he declared martial law.<\/p>\n

Other charges included allegedly creating and destroying a false martial law decree bearing forged signatures from the prime minister, ordering officials to distribute a misleading press release to foreign media, and directing an army commander to delete records from secure military phones.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors had sought a 10-year prison sentence for Yoon.<\/p>\n

In January, a lower court had sentenced Yoon to five years in prison after convicting him on most charges.<\/p>\n

In April, an appeals court upheld the ruling, added a guilty verdict over the misleading press release, and raised the sentence to seven years.<\/p>\n

Read moreSouth Korea court sentences ex-first lady to 20 months in prison for corruption<\/a><\/p>\n

Both prosecutors and Yoon’s legal team had appealed to the Supreme Court, whose rulings are final.<\/p>\n

“All appeals are dismissed,” a Supreme Court judge said in a televised ruling, adding that the lower court’s judgment “contained no errors”.<\/p>\n

Yoon’s legal team expressed “deep regret”, accusing the Supreme Court of concluding the case “without sufficient deliberation”.<\/p>\n

The ex-president’s lawyers plan to challenge the ruling on constitutional grounds and said they would raise a complaint.<\/p>\n

Political crisis <\/p>\n

The shock late-night national televised address in December 2024 that suspended civilian rule plunged South Korea into an unprecedented political crisis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Read moreSouth Korea: The forgotten Jeju uprising and massacre<\/a><\/p>\n

Martial law lasted only about six hours as lawmakers raced to vote it down in an emergency session.<\/p>\n

However, Yoon’s move triggered protests, sent the stock market plunging and caught key allies like the United States off-guard.<\/p>\n

In a separate case, a court handed Yoon a 30-year prison sentence for sending drones into North Korea<\/a> to “manufacture” a crisis ahead of his martial law bid.<\/p>\n

The former president has insisted his martial law declaration was “solely for the sake of the nation”.<\/p>\n

In 2024, he also defended it as necessary to root out “anti-state forces” and quash what he claimed were threats from North Korea.<\/p>\n

Yoon was ousted over the martial law bid in April 2025, triggering elections that gave the presidency to Lee Jae Myung of the centre-left Democratic Party.<\/p>\n

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Korea‘s highest court on Thursday upheld ex-president Yoon Suk Yeol‘s seven-year prison sentence over crimes tied to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79974,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[198,29163,31,6775,34,33,32],"class_list":["post-79973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-north-korea","tag-asia-pacific","tag-justice","tag-korea","tag-martial-law","tag-north-korea","tag-south-korea","tag-yoon-suk-yeol"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}