[Editorial] Convict Yoon Suk-yeol must use prison term to reflect on his crimes

A panel of the Supreme Courtroom reads its verdict within the trial of former President Yoon Suk-yeol on prices of obstructing justice and defying arrest at a listening to on July 9, 2026. (Yonhap)

The Supreme Courtroom on Thursday upheld a seven-year jail sentence for former President Yoon Suk-yeol on prices together with obstruction of justice in the course of the investigation into his declaration of martial regulation in December 2024. 

The ruling marks the Supreme Courtroom’s first choice on the case, issued 583 days after that fateful evening. In upholding this stiff punishment, the courtroom delivered a stern rebuke to Yoon for defying the official enforcement of the regulation by invoking presidential immunity from prosecution regardless of having dedicated riot.

After martial regulation was lifted, Yoon withdrew into the official presidential residence in Seoul’s Hannam neighborhood and refused to cooperate with the Corruption Investigation Workplace for Excessive-ranking Officers. He even urged his safety element to make use of firearms to dam the execution of a court-issued arrest warrant, and invoked presidential immunity from prosecution beneath Article 84 of the Structure.

Such immunity, nonetheless, doesn’t apply to in instances of riot or treason, nor does it preclude investigations into the president. Yoon tried to justify his refusal to cooperate with specious claims that “martial regulation is a presidential prerogative not topic to judicial overview” and that the CIO “lacks the authority to research the crime of riot.”

These claims are so absurd that they make it troublesome to imagine Yoon actually was as soon as the nation’s prime prosecutor. But his statements threw the nation into turmoil as lawmakers from the principle opposition Folks Energy Social gathering aligned with him, conservative figures in authorized and tutorial circles, and even conservative media chimed in with comparable stances. 

Public anger additionally reached a brand new excessive after Choose Jee Kui-youn, who presided over Yoon’s decrease courtroom trial on prices of main an riot, ordered his launch from custody after he had lastly been arrested.

Whereas the Supreme Courtroom understandably rejected all of Yoon’s “authorized technicalities,” judicial condemnation ought to have come quicker contemplating the pointless conflicts the nation has skilled.

Yoon’s protection workforce blasted the ruling, saying, “As if pressed for time and even failing to convene a full bench listening to, the Supreme Courtroom’s hasty rejection of our enchantment is tantamount to politicization of the judiciary.” Have they no disgrace? 

In a ruling by a decrease courtroom on the identical day, a few of the officers who had been indicted on prices of obstructing investigators from executing their arrest warrant on Yoon’s orders — Park Chong-jun and Kim Seong-hun, the No. 1 and No. 2 of Presidential Safety Service on the time, and Lee Kwang-woo, the pinnacle of the service’s safety bureau — had been convicted and instantly taken into custody. 

The courtroom referred to as their “exploitation of the group and command construction of the state company of the Presidential Safety Service to stop the execution of a warrant at size” a “grave offense.”

“The defendants, appearing in live performance, obstructed the lawful course of judicial proceedings and the investigation of Yoon Suk-yeol as a suspect in an riot case, thereby successfully nullifying the state’s means to uphold the rule of regulation,” the courtroom discovered.

Yoon is now not a suspect awaiting judgment, however a convicted felony for whom a jail sentence has been finalized. Whereas serving his sentence, Yoon should bear correctional and rehabilitative packages and have interaction in real reflection on his crimes. 

We await the verdicts in his quite a few different trials, together with that on prices of masterminding an riot. 

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