{"id":76425,"date":"2026-02-19T18:02:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T09:02:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/feb\/19\/yoon-suk-yeol-sentenced-to-life-in-prison-for-leading-insurrection-in-south-korea"},"modified":"2026-02-19T18:02:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T09:02:13","slug":"south-koreas-former-president-yoon-suk-yeol-jailed-for-life-for-leading-insurrection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=76425","title":{"rendered":"South Korea\u2019s former president Yoon Suk Yeol jailed for life for leading insurrection"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ex-leader sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labour over failed martial law declaration in 2024<\/p>\n<p>A South Korean court has sentenced the former president Yoon Suk Yeol to life imprisonment with labour over his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2024\/dec\/03\/south-korean-president-declares-emergency-martial-law\">failed martial law declaration<\/a> in December 2024, finding him guilty of leading an insurrection and making him the first elected head of state in the country\u2019s democratic era to receive the maximum custodial sentence.<\/p>\n<p>The Seoul central district court found that Yoon\u2019s declaration of martial law on 3 December 2024 constituted insurrection, carried out with the intent to disrupt the constitutional order.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/feb\/19\/yoon-suk-yeol-sentenced-to-life-in-prison-for-leading-insurrection-in-south-korea\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ex-leader sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labour over failed martial law declaration in 2024A South Korean court has sentenced the former president Yoon Suk Yeol to life imprisonment with labour over his failed martial law declaration in Decem&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2929,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,2459,222,42,3218],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-park-geun-hye","category-south-korea","category-world-news","category-yoon-suk-yeol"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2929"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76425"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76426,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76425\/revisions\/76426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}