SOUTH Korea’s ex-president Yoon Suk Yeol has been jailed for life.
The 65-year-old was found guilt of masterminding an insurrection and making a botched bod to impose military rule in December 2024.
Yoon’s order lasted just six hours, but culminated in the country’s biggest political crisis in decades.
The shock move sparked widespread panic as protests erupted across the country calling for his removal – with many accusing him of authoritarianism.
Yoon had been trying to overcome an opposition-controlled by sending troops to surround it on December 3 2024.
It paralysed what was left of Yoon’s government and cost his party the next election.
The former leader had previously been sentenced to five years in prison in January for obstructing his own arrest and falsifying documents.
Judge Jee Kui-youn has now said he found Yoon guilty of mobilising military and police forced in an attempt the opposition-led National assembly, lock up dissenters and establish a dictatorship.
Yoon had been facing the death penalty for threatening the country’s democracy and a special prosecutor demanded the most serious punishment.
But the 65-year-old escaped that fate because his poorly-planned power grab did not result in any deaths.
South Korea has not executed a death row inmate since 1997, in what is widely seen as a de facto moratorium on capital punishment amid calls for its abolition.
Yoon’s supporters rallied outside the courthouse in their droves as he arrived to hear his sentencing.
Hundreds of cops were on high alert as Yoon’s critics stood close by, demanding the death penalty.
Co-conspirators who carried out Yoon’s martial law decree have also been convicted and sentenced.
This includes former high-ranking military and police officials, such as ex-Defense Minister Kim Yong Hyun, who received a 30-year jail term for his central role in planning the measure and mobilising the army.
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