South Korean prosecutors asked an appeals court on Thursday to sentence former President Yoon Suk Yeol to death over his failed attempt to impose martial law in December 2024, renewing a demand a lower court rejected when it sentenced him to life in prison in February.
The request came from the team led by special counsel Cho Eun-suk at a hearing of the Seoul High Court, where Yoon is appealing his conviction on insurrection charges. Prosecutors argued that the first trial had underplayed how long the martial law plan was in preparation and had given too much weight to factors in Yoon’s favour.
“There is no reason to hesitate to hand down the death penalty,” a member of the prosecution team told the court, according to Yonhap News Agency. The team described the December 3, 2024 decree as a premeditated attempt to subvert South Korea’s constitutional order, saying martial law had been prepared over eight months.
“The commander in chief who had sworn to abide by the Constitution instead sent troops armed with guns pointing at the people,” the prosecution said. It called the episode “an unforgivable crime that destroyed the constitutional order and tried to turn back the clock of the Republic of Korea by 40 years.”
Yoon declared emergency martial law late on the night of December 3, 2024, saying he needed to eradicate what he called anti-state forces. The order lasted only about six hours. Troops were deployed to the National Assembly compound, but lawmakers pushed through a blockade of heavily armed soldiers, entered the chamber and voted to overturn the decree, forcing Yoon’s cabinet to lift it.
The Seoul Central District Court ruled in February that the deployment was an attempt to paralyse parliament and arrest key politicians, and sentenced Yoon to life imprisonment for leading an insurrection. Prosecutors had sought the death penalty at that first trial too, in January. Under South Korean law, the penalty for leading an insurrection ranges from death to life imprisonment.
Yoon’s defence team pushed back on Thursday, telling reporters that prosecutors were repeating an argument “devoid of evidence and legal logic.” His lawyers have maintained that the decree was meant to raise public awareness about what Yoon saw as an opposition-led legislature paralysing state affairs, and that he had no intention of causing harm or establishing authoritarian rule.
Prosecutors also sought heavier sentences for Yoon’s co-defendants: life imprisonment for former Defence Minister Kim Yong-hyun, 30 years for former Defence Intelligence Command chief Roh Sang-won, and 20 years for former National Police Agency Commissioner Jo Ji-ho.
The court has not yet set a date for its verdict. Yoon is expected to give his final statement on November 5, after which the judges will decide whether to uphold the life sentence, increase it, or reduce it.
Yoon was formally removed from office in April 2025, when South Korea’s Constitutional Court unanimously upheld his impeachment over the martial law declaration, triggering a snap presidential election. Beyond the insurrection case, he faces a total of eight trials connected to the martial law attempt, his wife’s alleged corruption, and the 2023 death of a marine officer.
Why this matters goes beyond one man’s fate. South Korea has not carried out an execution since 1997 and observes a de facto moratorium on capital punishment, so even if the appeals court imposed a death sentence, an execution would be unlikely. But a death sentence for a former president would still be a landmark in a country where the military seized power through coups within living memory — and where the December 2024 crisis tested, in a single night, whether democratic institutions could stop a president who tried to use soldiers against parliament. The court’s answer, when it comes, will set the legal measure of that night for years to come.
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