The political crisis surrounding former South Korean President Yoon Seok-yeol took a new turn on Monday after the Special Prosecutor’s Office in charge of his case filed new charges against him. Prosecutors have accused him of abuse of power and “gaining the enemy’s interests” after he allegedly flew a drone into North Korea with the aim of escalating tensions between the two neighboring countries in 2024. The charges are part of a judicial process that began with his imposition of martial law last December, an event that shook the country’s institutional foundations and led to one of the biggest scandals in decades in Asian democracies, a key US ally in the region.
As Public Prosecutors Office Spokesperson Park Ji-young reported this noon (early morning Spanish Peninsula time), a team led by Special Prosecutor Cho Eun-sook alleges that as a pretext for declaring a state of emergency, Yoon tried to provoke a military conflict between the North and South, which are officially still at war after signing the Armistice Agreement in 1953.
According to South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency, President Park declared at a press conference that “(Yun and others) conspired to create a situation in which it was possible to declare emergency martial law, increasing the risk of armed conflict and harming the nation’s military interests.”
Park explained that the accusations were based on a memo written in October 2024 by the then-head of counterintelligence, in which he urged them to “create an unstable situation or take advantage of the opportunities that arise” to escalate tensions and support the decision to declare extreme measures. A spokesman for the prosecutor’s office said the document indicated the military needed to target key locations in North Korea “so that a response is inevitable.”
Investigators also indicted three military officials involved in the incident: former Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun, former National Defense Counterintelligence Command chief Yeo In-hyun, and Drone Operations Command chief Kim Yong-dae. The first two are charged with collaborating with the enemy and abuse of power, while the third faces misdemeanor charges of obstructing official business and requesting the creation of false documents to conceal an operation.
Last October, North Korea released photos of the remains of a downed South Korean military drone, accusing the South Korean government of sending a drone into the North Korean capital to distribute leaflets against Kim Jong Un’s regime. South Korea’s military declined to comment on the alleged operation at the time, a trend that continued on Monday. Yonhap News reported that the Defense Ministry would not comment while the judicial process continues.
Prosecutors initially considered charging Yoon with “inciting foreign invasion,” a crime that would require evidence of collusion, but ultimately chose the “enemy’s interest” charge, concluding that the drone transmission led to the leaking of military secrets.
Yun, 64, was removed as head of state by the Constitutional Court in April, opening the door for the judiciary to investigate other criminal charges related to the events of December 3, 2024. Yun has since been formally charged with leading the rebellion and is being held in preventive detention while the criminal trial in the case proceeds. If convicted, the former leader could spend the rest of his life in prison or be sentenced to death, but this has been suspended since 1997.
The Special Prosecutor’s Office, headed by Cho, is an autonomous body within the judicial system created in the summer and has extraordinary powers, including issuing court orders, conducting searches, interrogating suspects, and requesting arrest warrants for senior officials when deemed necessary. He had previously accused him of interfering with Yun’s detention and of ignoring legal procedures and his own cabinet’s consent to the state of emergency.
In recent months, Mr. Yoon has insisted that he had no intention of establishing a military government, but rather that he had “warned of wrongdoing by rebel groups” (accusing them of sympathizing with North Korea) and aimed to “protect democracy from anti-national activities.”
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