World
South Korea indicts ex-leader Yoon over power plot provoking North
Jailed former president accused of a plot to provoke military aggression from North to help consolidate his rule.
Published On 15 Dec 2025
Prosecutors have indicted former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol for insurrection, accusing him of seeking to provoke military aggression from North Korea to help consolidate his power.
Special prosecutor Cho Eun-seok told a briefing on Monday that his team had indicted Yoon, five former cabinet members, and 18 others on insurrection charges, following a six-month probe into his declaration of martial law last year.
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“To create justification for declaring martial law, they tried to lure North Korea into mounting an armed aggression, but failed as North Korea did not respond militarily,” Cho said.
Yoon plunged South Korea into a crisis when he declared martial law in December 2024, prompting protesters and lawmakers to swarm parliament to force a vote against the measure.
The decree was quickly declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, and Yoon was subsequently impeached, removed from office, and jailed.
Martial law plotted for more than a year
Cho, one of three independent counsels appointed by South Korea’s current president, Lee Jae Myung, to investigate the martial law declaration, said Yoon and his supporters in the military had plotted since at least October 2023 to introduce the measure.
The plan involved installing collaborators in key military posts and removing a defence minister who opposed the scheme, Cho said.
The group even held dinner parties to build support for the plan among military leaders, he added.
Cho said Yoon, his Defence Minister Kim Yong Hyun, and Yeo In-hyung, commander of the military’s counterintelligence agency at the time, had directed military activities against North Korea since October 2024, seeking to provoke an aggressive response that would justify the declaration of martial law.
Yoon was indicted last month for ordering drone flights carrying propaganda leaflets into the North to inflame tensions – prompting his successor, Lee, to say earlier this month that he was weighing an apology to Pyongyang.
‘Antistate forces’
Cho said the provocations did not draw the expected reaction from North Korea, most likely because Pyongyang was tied up in supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine.
But Yoon pressed ahead regardless, he said, branding his political opponents – including the liberal-controlled legislature and the then-leader of his own conservative People Power Party – as “anti-state forces” in a bid to justify his actions.
Under South Korean law, insurrection is punishable by life in prison or the death penalty.
Yoon, who has been in jail since July following a stint in custody earlier in the year, insists that his martial law declaration was intended to draw public support for his fight against the opposition Democratic Party, which was abusing its control of parliament to cripple the work of the government.
“Yoon declared emergency martial law to monopolise and maintain power by taking control of the legislative and judiciary branches and eliminating his political opponents,” Cho said.
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Greenland leaders push back on Trump’s calls for US control of the island: ‘We don’t want to be Americans’
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Greenland’s leadership is pushing back on President Donald Trump as he and his administration call for the U.S. to take control of the island. Several Trump administration officials have backed the president’s calls for a takeover of Greenland, with many citing national security reasons.
“We don’t want to be Americans, we don’t want to be Danes, we want to be Greenlanders,” Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen and four party leaders said in a statement Friday night, according to The Associated Press. Greenland, a self-governing Danish territory and a longtime U.S. ally, has repeatedly rejected Trump’s statements about U.S. acquiring the island.
Greenland’s party leaders reiterated that the island’s “future must be decided by the Greenlandic people.”
“As Greenlandic party leaders, we would like to emphasize once again our wish that the United States’ contempt for our country ends,” the statement said.
TRUMP SAYS US IS MAKING MOVES TO ACQUIRE GREENLAND ‘WHETHER THEY LIKE IT OR NOT’
Greenland has rejected the Trump administration’s push to take over the Danish territory. (Thomas Traasdahl/Ritzau Scanpix / AFP via Getty Images; Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Trump was asked about the push to acquire Greenland on Friday during a roundtable with oil executives. The president, who has maintained that Greenland is vital to U.S. security, said it was important for the country to make the move so it could beat its adversaries to the punch.
“We are going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not,” Trump said Friday. “Because if we don’t do it, Russia or China will take over Greenland, and we’re not going to have Russia or China as a neighbor.”
Trump hosted nearly two dozen oil executives at the White House on Friday to discuss investments in Venezuela after the historic capture of President Nicolás Maduro on Jan. 3.
“We don’t want to have Russia there,” Trump said of Venezuela on Friday when asked if the nation appears to be an ally to the U.S. “We don’t want to have China there. And, by the way, we don’t want Russia or China going to Greenland, which, if we don’t take Greenland, you can have Russia or China as your next-door neighbor. That’s not going to happen.”
Trump said the U.S. is in control of Venezuela after the capture and extradition of Maduro.
Nielsen has previously rejected comparisons between Greenland and Venezuela, saying that his island was looking to improve its relations with the U.S., according to Reuters.
A “Make America Go Away” baseball cap, distributed for free by Danish artist Jens Martin Skibsted, is arranged in Sisimiut, Greenland, on March 30, 2025. (Juliette Pavy/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
FROM CARACAS TO NUUK: MADURO RAID SPARKS FRESH TRUMP PUSH ON GREENLAND
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said on Monday that Trump’s threats to annex Greenland could mean the end of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
“I also want to make it clear that if the U.S. chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything stops. Including our NATO and thus the security that has been provided since the end of the Second World War,” Frederiksen told Danish broadcaster TV2.
That same day, Nielsen said in a statement posted on Facebook that Greenland was “not an object of superpower rhetoric.”
Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen stands next to Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen during a visit to the Danish Parliament in Copenhagen on April 28, 2025. (Liselotte Sabroe/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images)
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White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller doubled down on Trump’s remarks, telling CNN in an interview on Monday that Greenland “should be part of the United States.”
CNN anchor Jake Tapper pressed Miller about whether the Trump administration could rule out military action against the Arctic island.
“The United States is the power of NATO. For the United States to secure the Arctic region, to protect and defend NATO and NATO interests, obviously Greenland should be part of the United States,” he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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