For a traitor like Yoon, even 30 years is too lenient

Former South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol received a 30-year prison sentence for treason, marking a historic conviction for a former head of state in the nation's modern history. The Seoul Central District Court found Yoon guilty of orchestrating a plot to send unmanned drones into Pyongyang, aiming to provoke North Korea and manufacture a pretext for declaring martial law.

The court rejected Yoon's defense that the drone operations were a response to North Korea's propaganda balloons. Instead, it concluded that Yoon and his then-defense minister, Kim Yong-hyun, deliberately sought to create a state of emergency. This reckless act, intended to justify martial law, actively harmed South Korea's military interests by revealing sensitive information about its drone assets and capabilities to the North.

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justify a martial law declaration, the country needed to be plunged in a state of emergency or something adjacent to such a state,” which led them to “provoke North Korea to deliberately create a state of emergency.

Kim Yong-hyun, the former defense minister, also received a 30-year sentence, while Yeo In-hyeong, ex-commander of the Defense Counterintelligence Command, was sentenced to 15 years. Kim Yong-dae, head of the Drone Operations Command, received a three-year sentence with a five-year stay of execution for abuse of power and destruction of military property.

This treason conviction is expected to impact Yoon's ongoing appeal in his insurrection case. The court's findings in the treason trial suggest an earlier timeline for Yoon's efforts to set the stage for martial law, potentially influencing the appellate court's review of the insurrection charges.

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provoke an armed response from North Korea and trigger a localized conflict.