South Korea’s Yoon accused of goading North into conflict to justify martial law

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.