SEOUL, South Korea — Former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol is awaiting a historic Yoon Suk Yeol verdict Thursday in a trial that accuses him of masterminding an insurrection through a short-lived declaration of martial law. Prosecutors are asking the Seoul Central District Court to impose the death penalty, saying the attempt to deploy troops and police against the National Assembly crossed the line from emergency governance into an unconstitutional power grab, Feb. 19, 2026.
The court is expected to decide whether Yoon, 65, led what prosecutors describe as an insurrection and whether he abused presidential authority by ordering security forces to block lawmakers and target political opponents. Security was tightened around the courthouse, with police bus barricades and screening for supporters and critics who gathered ahead of the ruling.
Even if the court finds Yoon guilty, South Korea’s decades-long halt on executions means any death sentence would be unlikely to be carried out. Still, the Yoon Suk Yeol verdict is a rare test of how the country’s courts handle an alleged attack on the constitutional order by a democratically elected leader.
Yoon Suk Yeol verdict: what the court is deciding
At the heart of the Yoon Suk Yeol verdict is whether the former president’s December 2024 martial law declaration was a lawful, time-limited measure or a criminal attempt to subvert democratic institutions. Prosecutors have argued that Yoon’s move to send troops to parliament and restrict political activity amounted to the “masterminding” of an insurrection, a charge that carries a maximum penalty of death or life imprisonment under South Korean law.
A Reuters preview of Thursday’s ruling said the court will also weigh allegations that Yoon ordered troops to storm parliament and tried to control access to opposition facilities during the crisis. Yoon has denied wrongdoing, saying he acted within presidential authority and meant to warn the public about what he described as opposition obstruction.
Whatever the outcome, the Yoon Suk Yeol verdict is not expected to end the legal process. Yoon has been held at the Seoul Detention Centre and is expected to remain in custody while he appeals any conviction, and defendants can seek further review at South Korea’s Supreme Court.
Prosecutors’ argument for the harshest sentence
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty in the insurrection case, repeatedly framing the episode as a direct assault on the country’s constitutional system. In closing arguments in January, Reuters reported that a prosecutor said investigators found evidence of a plan dating back to October 2023 involving Yoon and his former defense minister, Kim Yong-hyun, aimed at keeping Yoon in power.
Yoon has argued that his declaration was within presidential powers and that it was intended as a political alarm bell during a governing stalemate, not the start of an extended period of military rule. The court, however, is tasked with separating politics from criminal intent — and deciding whether orders issued during the roughly six-hour emergency declaration crossed into the crime of insurrection.
The Yoon Suk Yeol verdict also comes against the backdrop of South Korea’s long-running moratorium on executions. The country has not executed anyone since 1997, and death sentences are rare even in major political cases.
Related convictions keep the scandal in the headlines
The insurrection case is only one of multiple proceedings tied to the martial law episode, and the Yoon Suk Yeol verdict arrives after courts have already sentenced senior former officials from his administration.
Last week, The Associated Press reported that former Interior Minister Lee Sang-min was sentenced to seven years in prison for abetting the declaration, including for passing along orders to cut water and electricity to news organizations critical of Yoon — directives that were not carried out because lawmakers moved quickly to overturn the decree.
And in January, in the first verdict from a series of cases connected to the crisis, AP reported that the Seoul Central District Court sentenced Yoon to five years in prison for defying attempts to detain him and for fabricating the martial law proclamation, among other findings. That separate conviction means the Yoon Suk Yeol verdict in the insurrection trial is not the only ruling that could keep him behind bars.
How South Korea reached today’s courtroom moment
South Korea’s political crisis began late on Dec. 3, 2024, when Yoon declared martial law in a televised address and the military issued a decree limiting political activity. A Reuters timeline of the year after the declaration describes lawmakers climbing fences to reach the National Assembly and voting in the early hours to reject the order, prompting troops to withdraw and the decree to be lifted within hours.
An AP chronology of the arrest and impeachment fallout notes that competing investigations expanded in the days that followed and that Yoon publicly vowed to “fight to the end” as pressure to remove him mounted.
In March 2025, a Guardian report on a court ruling that briefly opened the door to Yoon’s release captured the volatile atmosphere as prosecutors weighed an appeal and supporters gathered near his residence. Those episodes set the stage for the Yoon Suk Yeol verdict, which arrives with the country still deeply polarized over what happened and what accountability should look like.
For many South Koreans, Thursday’s Yoon Suk Yeol verdict is about more than one man’s fate. It is a signal of whether the courts will treat the attempted use of emergency powers against an elected legislature as a punishable crime — and how the country’s democracy responds after its most severe political rupture in decades.
