Former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol
Jailed for Life for Sedition

South Korea’s former president was jailed for life for leading an insurrection, in one of the country’s biggest criminal trials in decades.

Yoon Suk Yeol attempted to impose martial law in 2024, accusing opponents of harboring “anti-state forces” sympathetic to North Korea. He ordered soldiers to storm the parliament, but they were prevented from reaching the chamber.

Yoon was charged with insurrection, one of the few criminal charges from which a president is not immune — it can also carry the death penalty, although Seoul has not executed anyone in decades.

The case has revealed deep divisions in the country, which only became democratic in 1987: Yoon supporters told the BBC that “leftist forces” want to unite with the north.