South Korean special prosecutor demands death penalty for ex-president Yoon Suk Yeol

A special prosecutor's team demanded the death penalty for former South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol at a Seoul High Court hearing on Thursday, ahead of an appeals verdict on rebellion charges over his short-lived martial law decree of December 2024. Yoon is appealing the life sentence imposed in February by the Seoul Central District Court.

The district court found that Yoon illegally mobilised troops and police to seize the legislature, arrest political opponents and establish unchecked rule for what the court called a considerable time. The decree, announced late at night on 3 December 2024, lasted only hours: a quorum of lawmakers pushed through a blockade of heavily armed soldiers and police at the National Assembly and voted it down, forcing the Cabinet to lift it. Yoon was impeached on 14 December, removed from office by the Constitutional Court in April 2025 and re-arrested in July.

Special Prosecutor Cho Eun-suk's team argued that only the death penalty could fully hold Yoon accountable for a rebellion that posed a grave threat to the country's democracy, and that the long-standing pause in executions should not prevent courts from imposing death sentences. The rebellion charge carries the heaviest punishment available, and Yoon faces multiple criminal trials over the martial law debacle and other allegations.

His lawyers dismissed the demand as an argument 'devoid of evidence and legal logic,' maintaining that the martial law was intended to raise public awareness of what Yoon called attempts by the opposition-led legislature to paralyse state affairs, with no intention of causing harm or establishing authoritarian rule.

The rebellion case is not the only one before the courts. Yoon is also appealing a 30-year prison term in a separate trial, in which prosecutors accuse him of ordering drone flights in 2024 deliberately to heighten tensions with North Korea and create a pretext for martial law at home. His lawyers say the flights were a response to North Korea sending thousands of trash-carrying balloons into the South.

The Seoul High Court has not set a date for its verdict. South Korea last carried out an execution in 1997.