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South Korean special prosecutors on Thursday again demanded the death penalty for former President Yoon Suk Yeol, arguing that his life sentence for leading an insurrection was too lenient. The demand, made at an appeal hearing at the Seoul High Court, reopens one of the most consequential legal questions in South Korea's democratic history: what punishment fits a president who sent troops to seize his own parliament?
What happened in December 2024
On the night of December 3, 2024, Yoon declared martial law, deploying soldiers and police to the National Assembly with orders, prosecutors say, to seize the legislature, arrest political opponents and establish unchecked rule. Lawmakers broke through a blockade of heavily armed troops and voted to overturn the decree within hours, forcing Yoon's cabinet to lift it. He was suspended from office on December 14, 2024, after impeachment by the liberal-led legislature, and formally removed by the Constitutional Court in April 2025. He was indicted while in detention in January 2025.
In February 2026, the Seoul Central District Court convicted Yoon of leading an insurrection and sentenced him to life imprisonment. Prosecutors had sought the death penalty at that first trial too; the court chose life instead, finding, among other things, that the operation did not appear meticulously planned, that martial law ended quickly, and that the use of force was restrained.
Why prosecutors say life is not enough
Special prosecutor Cho Eun-suk's team challenged all three of those findings on Thursday. According to Al Jazeera, prosecutors told the court there was "no reason to hesitate" over the death penalty, arguing that the operation's failure owed more to public resistance and to soldiers' and police officers' reluctance to follow orders than to any restraint by Yoon. The Korea Herald reported that prosecutors described the elected president's "self-coup" as an unforgivable crime against the constitutional order that sought to turn Korea's clock back 40 years.
Yoon's legal team pushed back, telling reporters that prosecutors were repeating an argument "devoid of evidence and legal logic," and maintaining that the martial law decree was intended to raise public awareness about what Yoon called attempts by the opposition-led legislature to paralyse state affairs. As the Associated Press noted, the Seoul High Court has yet to set a date for its verdict on Yoon's appeal.
What happens next — and why execution is unlikely
Two more hearings are planned, including Yoon's final statement on November 5, after which the court will set a sentencing date. Under South Korean criminal law, the ringleader of an insurrection faces only three possible penalties: death, life imprisonment, or life imprisonment without labour. But even if the court imposed death, an execution is unlikely in practice: South Korea has not carried out an execution since 1997 and effectively maintains a moratorium. Prosecutors argue that the long pause should not prevent judges from imposing the sentence itself.
Yoon is also appealing a separate 30-year prison term for allegedly ordering drone flights in 2024 to deliberately heighten tensions with North Korea and create a pretext for martial law at home. He is the second former president convicted of leading an insurrection, after Chun Doo-hwan. Whatever the High Court decides, the case has already set the precedent that a president who turns the military on parliament will face the full weight of the law — and Thursday's hearing was prosecutors' bid to make that weight as heavy as the statute allows. For the wider region's security picture, see North Korea's missile barrage and China's space weapons warning.