On Oct. 1, 2024, then-President Yoon Suk-yeol waves to a crowd whereas accompanied by then-Protection Minister Kim Yong-hyun throughout a army parade marking Armed Forces Day. (Yonhap)
On Monday, particular counsel Cho Eun-seok’s crew of investigators launched a nine-page closing report of its impartial inquiry into former President Yoon Suk-yeol’s tried revolt and treason. To summarize, the investigators discovered that Yoon’s preparations to declare martial regulation dated again to October 2023 on the newest, and that he acted with the objective of consolidating and sustaining energy.
This marks a big revision to the indictment filed in opposition to Yoon in January, during which the previous president was charged with appearing because the ringleader of an revolt.
On this earlier indictment, prosecutors said that discussions and preparations for declaring martial regulation started round March 2024 on account of alleged “difficulties in governing the state.” The particular probe crew has now revealed a extra particular and complete timeline for the revolt try and its objectives. The crew plans to amend the indictments of Yoon and his accomplices, bearing in mind the standing of their ongoing trials.
The particular probe crew considered the relocation of the presidential workplace and residence as the start line of the martial regulation preparation course of. Instantly upon taking workplace, Yoon relocated the presidential workplace to the Ministry of Nationwide Protection advanced adjoining to the Joint Chiefs of Workers headquarters inside the Yongsan US Military Garrison in Seoul, and moved the presidential residence to the Hannam neighborhood in Seoul.
“The president was positioned inside a army base alongside the army command. With the residences of key army commanders, such because the minister of nationwide protection and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Workers, positioned in shut proximity to the president and the director of the Presidential Safety Service, circumstances had been created for the president and the army to work hand in glove,” Cho stated in his briefing Monday.
The particular counsel investigation decided that preparations for the declaration of martial regulation started earlier than October 2023. The decisive clue that led the crew to set October 2023 as the newest attainable place to begin for martial regulation preparations was a memo in a pocket book belonging to former Protection Intelligence Command chief Roh Sang-won, who’s suspected of being a behind-the-scenes mastermind for the martial regulation plans.
Cho Eun-seok, the particular counsel who oversaw an impartial investigation into final 12 months’s martial regulation disaster and alleged acts of revolt and treason, publicizes the findings of his crew’s investigation on Dec. 15, 2025, on the Seoul Excessive Prosecutors’ Workplace within the metropolis’s Seocho District. (pool picture)
The army personnel appointments made in October 2023 — equivalent to these for protection counterintelligence commander, Military chief of workers, and floor operations commander — precisely matched the memo in Roh’s pocket book, which had been written prior.
Moreover, investigators detected that discussions on the timing of martial regulation declaration —whether or not to implement it earlier than or after the 2024 basic election — had been held previous to the aforementioned personnel appointments. This led the crew to suspect that Yoon initiated personnel appointments with the objective of declaring martial regulation.
Whereas the particular counsel crew couldn’t pinpoint the precise second Yoon first resolved to declare martial regulation, it recognized a number of situations previous to October 2023 the place indicators of his intent emerged. The crew confirmed statements from a former high-ranking intelligence official who heard between July and August 2022 that Yoon was planning martial regulation after the following basic election.
As well as, on Nov. 25, 2022, throughout a dinner with Individuals Energy Social gathering management, Yoon expressed animosity towards political opponents. Yoon pressured that he had the authority to declare a state of emergency, and stated he would “wipe out” his opponents even when he is likely to be shot and assassinated.
In keeping with this comment is one other expression of hostility that passed off in Hawaii in July 2024. After attending the NATO summit, Yoon made a cease in Hawaii to fulfill with Kang Ho-pil, then-vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Workers. To Kang, he stated, “Han Dong-hoon is a commie. Shouldn’t the army get entangled?”
The particular counsel cited this occasion as an expression of Yoon’s hostility towards Han, who was within the operating to steer the PPP on the time, and his perception within the necessity of martial regulation.
Although public prosecutors had primarily left clean the aim of revolt in its indictment of Yoon, the particular counsel said Yoon supposed “to eradicate political opposition, in addition to to monopolize and keep energy.”
The particular probe crew’s report argued that Yoon, having seized administrative energy, then used the army to declare martial regulation in an try to monopolize energy by seizing legislative and judicial authority as nicely.
The crew cited varied directive paperwork acquired by members of Yoon’s Cupboard throughout martial regulation, together with notes from Roh’s pocket book, as proof of the try to seize legislative authority.
On the time, former Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok acquired a doc from the presidential workplace containing directions to dam Nationwide Meeting funds and allocate budgets for an emergency legislative physique, for instance. Roh’s pocket book included entries equivalent to “collapse all leftist forces in preparation for the following presidential election” and “constitutional modification (for second and third time period).”
The particular probe decided that the rationale Protection Intelligence Command personnel ready baseball bats and different gadgets to torture Nationwide Election Fee workers was to construct a justification for suspending the Nationwide Meeting’s capabilities. The command allegedly deliberate to droop the Nationwide Meeting’s capabilities to justify the institution of an emergency legislative physique after extracting false confessions from election fee workers that the 2024 basic election had been rigged.
“They appear to have believed that in the event that they succeeded in arresting [politicians] and extracting statements that the election had been rigged by means of torture, they may create one thing much like the Nationwide Safety Legislative Council, [which acted as the National Assembly] throughout Chun Doo-hwan’s [dictatorial] administration,” defined Park Ji-yeong, a deputy particular counsel on Cho’s crew.
Investigators with the particular probe concluded that the insurrectionists who plotted this scheme tried to impress North Korea to fulfill the precise necessities for declaring martial regulation, which is justified in “wartime or emergencies.” Nevertheless, their plan failed as a result of North Korea didn’t retaliate with a army assault.
“Yoon and [his accomplices] declared martial regulation by framing political actions carried out within the Nationwide Meeting as ‘anti-state acts’ equivalent to plotting revolt,” Cho stated.
By Kang Jae-gu, workers reporter
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