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Yoon Suk-yeol, former president of South Korea, enters the Seoul Central District Court in Seocho District, Seoul, on April 14 for his first criminal trial. / Photo: Joint Press Corps

Former President Yoon Suk-yeol appeared at his first criminal trial on April 14 and firmly denied all charges of leading an insurrection, calling the accusations "legally groundless."

Speaking at the Seoul Central District Court, Yoon stated, "To call an incident in which I accepted the dissolution of the National Assembly within hours, and did so nonviolently, an insurrection is legally flawed." He added, "The declaration of martial law was to protect liberal democracy. I want to ask if there’s any historical precedent of a coup lasting just a few hours because the National Assembly demanded it stop."

The former president directly addressed the court during the trial, presided over by Judge Ji Gui-yeon of the 25th Criminal Division, where he rejected the prosecution’s allegations point by point. The session was held without media access to the courtroom. Holding the microphone himself, Yoon said, "The idea that I had been planning martial law since last spring is absurd. Equating martial law with a coup or rebellion is already a legal misjudgment. A military coup was never even imagined."

Yoon harshly criticized the prosecution’s framing of the case, calling it "ridiculous." "Some individuals made statements to investigators out of fear during the Constitutional Court's impeachment proceedings, and those unverified claims were taken at face value," he said. He also dismissed the so-called "Choi Sang-mok memo" — a note instructing the drafting of an emergency legislative body budget just before the declaration of martial law on December 3 — saying, "The idea that we were trying to abolish the National Assembly with a new emergency legislative body is nonsense. The notion of handing such matters to the economy minister makes no sense."

Yoon also claimed that despite references to investigative and arrest squads in the early planning, they were never actually formed or put into action. "There is no explanation as to why nothing was carried out," he said.

In contrast, prosecutors argued that Yoon declared nationwide martial law to effectively dismantle the powers of the National Assembly, the National Election Commission, and other constitutional bodies. “The defendant rendered constitutional functions, such as warrant requirements and the multi-party system, inoperable with the goal of dismantling the legal order,” they said.

They further argued that the Yoon administration faced continuous political gridlock due to a legislature controlled by opposition parties, leading to clashes over key policies, impeachment attempts against senior officials, budget cuts, and election fraud allegations. "However, none of these circumstances meet the constitutional requirement for declaring martial law, which must involve war, rebellion, or an equivalent state of emergency," the prosecution stated.