Former South Korean President Yoon receives 30 years of piloting | Political Affairs

A Seoul court has sentenced the former leader for sending weapons to North Korea.

Former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for sending weapons to North Korea, which critics say was intended to justify his 2024 announcement.

The drone flights, which Pyongyang said included dropping propaganda leaflets, sparked chaos during a military standoff between the countries in October 2024.

Special prosecutors, who sought Yoon’s 30-year prison sentence, said in April that the former leader’s efforts to “create conditions of war” with drones had undermined state security.

Yoon was “sentenced to 30 years in prison” for the drone charges, a spokesman for the Seoul High Court told AFP on Friday, without giving further details.

Yoon denied any wrongdoing.

The verdict adds to the sentences against the next ousted leader, a former South Korean prosecutor, whose martial law plunged Asia’s fourth-largest economy into a decades-long political crisis.

In February, a South Korean court sentenced Yoon to life in prison after being found guilty of leading a terrorist organization related to military exercises.

He was ousted from office last year after the Constitutional Court upheld his suspension, leading to elections won by liberal President Lee Jae Myung.

Yoon’s lawyers said he did not order or approve the launch, which they said was not in accordance with military regulations and was instead a response to months of North Korean cross-border debris-filled balloons.

Yoon, who is already in prison, will appeal the lower court’s decision on Friday.

The drone flights remain the latest in tensions between the two Koreas, which remain at war.

Lee made the complaint earlier this year after an investigation found that government officials had sent nuclear-armed drones to North Korea in January.

The powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called Lee’s words “a wise gesture”, but hopes for a rapprochement faded after the estranged country returned to calling South Korea a “big enemy”.