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South Korea’s former president Yoon Suk-yeol, removed from office and arrested earlier this year for attempting to impose martial law, is facing new charges alleging he sought to provoke North Korea to justify his failed power grab. Prosecutors say Yoon and senior aides orchestrated risky military operations near the border to draw a retaliation from Pyongyang, which they hoped would legitimise the emergency decree Yoon signed on December 3 while still in office. Those operations allegedly included flying leaflet-dropping drones into the North, staging live-fire artillery drills and sending Apache helicopters armed with live ammunition on threatening sorties near the frontier. Also indicted were former defence minister Kim Yong-hyun and Yeo In-hyung, former chief of the Defence Counterintelligence Command, both of whom are already detained over the martial law plot. Kim Yong-dae, head of the Drone Operations Command who oversaw the drone mission, was charged but not arrested. Park Ji-young, a senior investigator working for the independent counsel in the case, said the three had conspired to endanger national security by “heightening the risk of armed conflict” between the two Koreas to create a pretext for martial law. According to the indictment, Yoon and his aides ordered a covert drone incursion into Pyongyang in October last year, aiming to provoke the North and justify the planned declaration. Several drones crashed, exposing classified data and causing what prosecutors called a serious national security breach. North Korea reacted angrily to the repeated drone infiltrations but stopped short of the military retaliation it had threatened, responding instead by sending more rubbish-filled balloons over Seoul. Yang Moo-jin, a political scientist at the University of North Korean Studies, said Pyongyang might have reacted differently if not for its ongoing involvement in Russia’s war in Ukraine, where up to 11,000 North Korean troops have reportedly been deployed. “The North was unable to respond militarily because it couldn’t afford to engage in two conflicts at the same time,” Yang told This Week in Asia. “We thought the authoritarian habit of exploiting North Korean tensions for political gain was a relic of the past, but we were mistaken,” he added. Targets revealed A memo recovered from the phone of Yeo, the now jailed intelligence chief, revealed he had contemplated strikes on symbolic North Korean sites to provoke a reaction. “We must identify and exploit a golden chance to produce immediate effects,” Yeo wrote in October 2024, two months before the attempted coup. “To that end, we should either create instability or seize an opportunity that may arise.” His list of targets included nuclear facilities, the city of Samjiyeon – a key site in the ruling Kim dynasty’s revolutionary lore – the Wonsan tourism zone and leader Kim Jong-un’s private resort. Another note a month later named opposition politicians and others marked for detention if the martial law plan had succeeded. Among them were Lee Jae-myung, then opposition leader and now president following Yoon’s impeachment, and former People Power Party chief Han Dong-hoon, an ex-Yoon ally who broke with him over his wife Kim Keon-hee’s controversies. Prosecutors cited Yeo’s memos and a notebook kept by former army intelligence chief Noh Sang-won as proof that martial law preparations had begun as early as October 2023, when Yoon reshuffled the military hierarchy. “I had hoped these suspicions would prove unfounded,” said Park, the investigator, adding that the evidence had left the team not just disappointed but deeply dismayed. A president and a defence minister exploiting inter-Korean tensions for political purposes endangered every citizen, she said. Meanwhile, a separate corruption case against Yoon’s wife Kim allege the luxury gifts she accepted in exchange for appointments and favours included a Graff necklace, Chanel handbags and shoes from the Unification Church via a shaman intermediary known as Gunjin. A construction magnate also allegedly gave her Van Cleef & Arpels and Tiffany jewellery worth about 100 million won (US$68,600), while other donations included a 50 million won Vacheron Constantin watch and an expensive painting from a former prosecutor. More recently, Kim has been accused of receiving a fist-sized gold turtle from historian Lee Bae-yong, who was later appointed head of the National Education Commission. Lee was previously criticised for accompanying Kim on a private visit to Gyeongbokgung Palace in 2023, where Kim reportedly sat on the royal throne – an act that drew widespread ridicule online. Months earlier, Kim and Yoon had reportedly spent 10 minutes alone inside the private chamber of Queen Myeongseong, the last queen of the Joseon dynasty, reinforcing perceptions that the former first lady wielded outsize influence over her husband and harboured royal aspirations.
