S. Korea’s ex-president gets 30 years over North Korea drone incident

South Korea’s former president Yoon Suk Yeol was already given life in jail in February for leading an insurrection. (EPA Images pic)

SEOUL: South Korea’s 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’s effort to “fabricate wartime conditions” with the drones had undermined state security.

This sentence comes after Yoon was given life in jail in February for leading an insurrection to “paralyse” South Korea’s National Assembly with his martial law declaration.

Yoon was “given 30 years in jail” for the charges, a spokesman for the Seoul Central District Court told AFP Friday, without giving further details.

Prosecutors had also argued that the operation heightened tensions with North Korea and led to the leak of classified information — including details about force capabilities — after the drones crashed, the Yonhap news agency reported.

He has appealed against the conviction, insisting that he declared martial law “solely for the sake of the nation”.

Yoon’s legal team had denied the charge involving the drones and said there was “no prior order or subsequent approval” by him for the drone operation cited by prosecutors.

They said the operation was in response to North Korea sending balloons carrying trash across the border that year and was “a legitimate act of self-defence” unrelated to Yoon’s martial law declaration.

His lawyers dismissed the prosecution’s claims as a “speculative and false novel”.

Drone flights remain a flashpoint in tensions between the two Koreas, which remain technically at war.

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.

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 the South its “most hostile” enemy.