A former president of South Korea has been sentenced in his country to 30 years in prison for illegally declaring martial law while he was in office.
Yoon Suk Yeol was so obsessed with maintaining his grip on power he ordered drone flights over North Korea two years ago to trigger a response as an excuse for martial law.
In his own defense, Yoon claimed the drone surveillance over enemy territory was his justified response to North Korea flying bags of trash over the border into the south.
Seoul Central District Court found Yoon guilty of aiding an adversary and abusing his power, saying he sought to provoke North Korea into launching armed attacks or other serious provocations against South Korea to manufacture a national emergency.
The moves harmed South Korea’s military interests by exposing its capabilities, undermining its ability to conduct future operations and prompting North Korea to strengthen its defense posture, prosecutors said.
Yoon is also currently serving a life sentence after being convicted of heading an insurrection.
The two Koreas have been at war with each other in one form or another since the 1950s.
Despite the North continually trying to provoke the South into war, so far the armistice that ended the Korean War has prevented major bloodshed on either side of the border.
At times the provocations have become downright laughable if not dangerous.
They got to the point a few years ago when the North Korean government began flying bags of trash over the southern border and dropping them from the sky into enemy territory to try to provoke the South into war.
The North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has to have had secretly declared a political victory by taking down a former government foe with nothing more than bags of garbage.
