South Korea’s Ousted President Yoon, Spared a Death Sentence, Gets Life for Abortive Martial Law Coup

SEOUL — South Korea’s ousted president, Yoon Suk-yeol, faces the rest of his life in prison while the country’s polarized society cheered and jeered the sentence. Rows of police buses blockaded Seoul’s district court from opposing crowds holding signs in Korean meaning, “Death for Yoon” and “God will Punish Communism.”The outcries as the presiding judge inside the court read a long statement reached a crescendo as he concluded with the verdict that Mr. Yoon was guilty of insurrection for ordering martial law on the night of December 3, 2024. The fact that Mr. Yoon lifted his decree six hours later after the National Assembly, dominated by the left-leaning Minju or democratic party voted it down, was no excuse in the eyes of the court for Mr. Yoon and four others, whose sentences ranged from three to 30 years.Mr. Yoon “acted with the purpose of subverting the constitution by sending the military to the National Assembly to paralyze or limit its function for a prolonged period,” said the judge before sentencing him to life.If that punishment seemed harsh for a sensational but brief episode in which no shots were fired and no one was killed or injured, it was less than the death sentence demanded by the prosecutors of the left-leaning government of President Lee Jae-myung. It was Mr. Lee, leader of the Minju, who marshalled assembly members to avert what he called “a coup against the constitution.” Mr. Lee, whom Mr.Yoon had defeated by a narrow margin in the 2022 presidential election, was elected president last June after Mr. Yoon’s ouster and impeachment.The presiding judge, Ji Gwi-yeon, said that Mr. Yoon and his top aides decided martial law was the only way to push through a legislative program repeatedly blocked by Mr. Lee’s Minju party. The proclamation of martial law, the attempt to shut down the assembly, the orders to military and police units, and the seizure of the National Election Commission were “riotous acts,” he said. They “had the force to disrupt the peace not only across South Korea but also in Seoul and the metropolitan area.”The verdict and sentences against Mr. Yoon and his top lieutenants, including his defense minister, intelligence chief, and three top national police officials, will undoubtedly ricochet through the courts as their attorneys file appeals and right-wingers, many waving American flags, demonstrate regularly against Mr. Lee’s government. Others have also received hefty sentences, including a former ambassador to Washington, Han Duck-soo, who had served as Mr. Yoon; s prime minister and then as acting president while Mr. Yoon was in jail facing trial.“It’s really unfair,” said Mr. Yoon’s lawyer, Yoon Kap-keun, no relation, claiming the trial was “politically motivated” with “no evidence” to support the gravity of the charges. Mr. Yoon was previously sentenced to five years for obstructing his arrest and still faces a charge of illegally ordering drone flights over North Korea.“Our society is extremely polarized,” said a middle-aged office worker, Park Yoon-ji. “Nobody knows the truth. We are divided between right and left. People are mostly pro-American, but our politicians are two-faced. They talk as if they are anti-China, but they have strong relations with the Chinese.”The demise of Mr. Yoon marks the collapse of a period in which he had moved close to Washington, seeing Mr. Biden in the White House in April 2023 when he sang “American Pie,” and then joining Mr. Biden and Japan’s former prime minister, Fumio Kishida four months later at Camp David. The trilateral summit solidified relations among them, foreshadowing joint military exercises between Japan and South Korea, historic enemies from the era in which Japan ruled the Korean peninsula.Mr. Yoon also enthusiastically endorsed American-Korean military exercises, which his predecessor, the liberal Moon Jae-in, had barred except in war games played on computers. American commanders believed relations between Seoul and Washington, often strained over the years since the Korean War, had entered a new era.By historical coincidence, Mr. Yoon was convicted and sentenced in the same courtroom in which another pro-American president, the dictatorial General Chun Do-hwan, was sentenced to death 30 years earlier for seizing power in 1979 after the assassination of the dictator Park Chung-Hee.Unlike Mr. Yoon, however, Chun succeeded in taking over. He ruled with an iron fist until 1988 after Korea’s first election under the country’s “democracy constitution,” to which he had been forced in wild protests to agree. Convicted in 1996, he was freed the next year by the country’s first civilian president, Kim Young-sam.The betting is that Mr. Yoon and his confederates will be freed by whoever gets elected president after Mr. Lee’s five year term – or maybe by Mr. Lee himself. “It’s the only way to unify the country,” a retired engineer, Choi Tae-hyun, told the Sun. “Otherwise we will go on hating each other.”

South Korea’s Ousted President Yoon, Spared a Death Sentence, Gets Life for Abortive Martial Law Coup

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