South Korea’s Yoon accused of goading North into conflict to justify martial law

byVerified News Online

AdvertisementSouth KoreaThis Week in AsiaPeopleSouth Korea’s Yoon tried to goad North into attacking to justify martial law: prosecutors

Memos show the ex-president’s intelligence chief contemplated strikes on Kim Jong-un’s private resort and nuclear facilities

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A South Korean multiple launch rocket system takes part in a live-fire drill in the border county of Goseong on October 17, 2024, mere weeks before Yoon’s martial law declaration. Photo: South Korean Defence Ministry/AFP

Park Chan-kyongSouth Korea’s former president Yoon Suk-yeol, removed from office and arrested earlier this year for attempting to impose martial law, is facing new charges alleging he sought to provoke North Korea to justify his failed power grab.Advertisement

Prosecutors say Yoon and senior aides orchestrated risky military operations near the border to draw a retaliation from Pyongyang, which they hoped would legitimise the emergency decree Yoon signed on December 3 while still in office.

An American soldier observes a South Korean AH-64 Apache helicopter firing rockets during a live-fire exercise in Pocheon, near the inter-Korean border, on October 30, 2024. Photo: AFP
An American soldier observes a South Korean AH-64 Apache helicopter firing rockets during a live-fire exercise in Pocheon, near the inter-Korean border, on October 30, 2024. Photo: AFP

Those operations allegedly included flying leaflet-dropping drones into the North, staging live-fire artillery drills and sending Apache helicopters armed with live ammunition on threatening sorties near the frontier.

Also indicted were former defence minister Kim Yong-hyun and Yeo In-hyung, former chief of the Defence Counterintelligence Command, both of whom are already detained over the martial law plot. Kim Yong-dae, head of the Drone Operations Command who oversaw the drone mission, was charged but not arrested.

A South Korean drone is seen in an undisclosed location after being recovered by North Korea in October last year. Photo: KCNA/KNS/AFP
A South Korean drone is seen in an undisclosed location after being recovered by North Korea in October last year. Photo: KCNA/KNS/AFP

Park Ji-young, a senior investigator working for the independent counsel in the case, said the three had conspired to endanger national security by “heightening the risk of armed conflict” between the two Koreas to create a pretext for martial law.

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