South Korea’s former president ‘planned to provoke war with North Korea’

Former South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol plotted with senior aides to provoke an armed aggression from North Korea to justify declaring martial law last December, the special prosecutor claimed.

The plot was not a spur-of-the-moment decision, but a coordinated strategy going back to 2023 which involved covert drone operations aimed at escalating tensions and plans to suspend the parliament, Cho Eun Seok said.

“We know well from historic experience that the justification given by those in power for a coup is only a facade and the sole purpose is to monopolise and maintain power,” Mr Cho told reporters on Monday.

He said investigators had concluded Mr Yoon and his senior officials sought to provoke a military response from Pyongyang ahead of the short-lived martial law declaration in December last year. The plan failed because Pyongyang did not take the bait, he added.

Mr Yoon and his five cabinet ministers were among 24 people charged with offences related to insurrectionfollowing a six-month inquiry.

Mr Yoon and his defence minister, Kim Yong Hyun, had designed a scheme to suspend the National Assembly and replace it with an emergency legislative body once martial law was declared, Mr Cho alleged.

“To create justification for declaring martial law, they tried to lure North Korea into mounting an armed aggression, but failed as North Korea did not respond militarily,” the special prosecutor said.

Investigators previously accused Mr Yoon and military leaders of authorising covert drone flights into North Korea to inflame tensions. When the plan failed to spark a confrontation, prosecutors said, Mr Yoon moved ahead with declaring martial law anyway, branding political opponents – including the then head of his own People Power Party – as “anti-state forces”.

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In July, the defence ministry suspended its drone operations chief, Major General Kim Yong Dae, amid an investigation into whether military drones were illegally flown into the North.

The commander claimed the drone flights were part of a “clandestine military operation” to respond to the North’s act of sending trash balloons and weren’t intended to provoke the neighbour.

Mr Cho was appointed as one of three special prosecutors to investigate the martial law declaration after Lee Jae Myung won the snap presidential election necessitated by Mr Yoon’s removal from office by the Constitutional Court in April.

Mr Yoon is standing trial on insurrection charges, which carry a maximum penalty of life imprisonment or death.

Several of his former ministers and officials face additional charges linked to the failed martial law bid.

South Korean Lawmakers, led by the liberal Democratic Party, voted to overturn Mr Yoon’s martial law decree within hours of its announcement on 3 December. The parliament later impeached the president for breaching his constitutional duties.

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Mr Yoon’s wife, Kim Keon Hee, remains under a separate investigation by another special prosecutor over alleged corruption tied to activities before and during his presidency.

Prosecutors acknowledged that growing political pressure from the allegations could have influenced Mr Yoon’s actions but said that there was no evidence linking Ms Kim to the alleged conspiracy.

Park Ji Young, a spokesperson for the prosecution team, said Mr Yoon’s intelligence chief was due to travel to Washington the day after martial law was declared to pre-empt any objections from the US.

December was chosen deliberately to coincide with political distraction in Washington following Donald Trump’s election victory, she added.

Mr Yoon has consistently rejected the accusations, insisting that declaring martial law was within his presidential authority. He has argued the move was intended to warn against what he described as the opposition’s abuse of parliamentary power.