South Korea ex-minister jailed on charges linked to martial law fiasco

A Seoul court sentenced a former defence minister on Friday to three years in prison on charges related to ex-president Yoon Suk Yeol’s brief but catastrophic declaration of martial law in 2024, an official said.

Ex-minister Kim Yong-hyun was charged with revealing classified military information to a civilian for the purposes of creating a special team to investigate unverified election fraud claims by Yoon.

The ex-president cited electoral wrongdoing as one reason for his December 2024 martial law declaration, which lasted only about six hours as lawmakers raced to the assembly building and voted it down in an emergency session. Yoon has since been convicted of leading an insurrection, and is in detention while appealing a life sentence.

Kim, for his part, was accused of wrongfully revealing the identities of intelligence officers who were to be part of a special team to investigate Yoon’s vote cheating allegations.

Prosecutors had asked for a five-year prison term, but a panel of judges sentenced him to three years behind bars, a spokesman for the Seoul Central District told AFP on Friday.

The judges said Kim’s offence “was one of the driving forces that made the declaration of martial law possible despite the absence of any substantive legal grounds”. Earlier this year, Kim was sentenced to 30 years in prison in a separate case related to the martial law declaration.

Yoon’s shock late-night national televised address plunged South Korea into an unprecedented political crisis. It triggered protests, sent the stock market plunging and caught key allies like the United States off-guard.