In a televised verdict, the Seoul Central District Court in southern Seoul found him guilty of ordering the dispatch of drones to North Korea several times in October 2024, about two months before his Dec. 3 declaration of martial law.
The court determined that the drone dispatches were intended to escalate military tensions along the inter-Korean border in order to justify the declaration of martial law.
Prosecutors had earlier sought a 10-year prison sentence for Yoon, and the court handed down the same sentence.
The court also sentenced former Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun to 30 years in prison for carrying out Yoon's orders to send drones into the North, higher than the 25 years sought by prosecutors.
The court criticized Yoon for "betraying expectations" that a president should protect citizens' safety, saying his use of the military for personal purposes was "illegitimate" and heightened military tensions that could have led to military clashes and a security crisis on the Korean Peninsula.
The court also said that he wasted military resources and weakened military readiness that should have been available for immediate deployment in an emergency.
Yoon's lawyers, however, argued that the drone dispatches were a "legitimate" military response to North Korea's trash-carrying balloons sent into the South at the time, and vowed to appeal.
Yoon, who was ousted from the presidency on April 4 last year after the Constitutional Court of Korea unanimously upheld his impeachment, was sentenced to life imprisonment last February on his main charges of insurrection and abuse of power but has also faced a string of separate trials related to the debacle.
Copyright ⓒ Aju Press All rights reserved.
