The appeals court ruling in the case against former President Yoon Suk-yeol on charges including obstruction of special official duties will come on the 29th. With the first trial finding Yoon partly guilty for blocking the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO)'s execution of an arrest warrant and for procedural illegality related to the declaration of emergency martial law, and sentencing him to five years in prison, the issue is whether the appellate court will maintain the same judgment.
The Criminal Division 1 of the Seoul High Court (presiding judge Yoon Sung-sik, senior judge) will hold the sentencing hearing at 3 p.m. for Yoon's appeal on charges including obstruction of special official duties and abuse of power to interfere with the exercise of rights. The court decided to livestream the ruling in real time. Among the three special counsel cases on appeal, this is the first time a sentencing will be livestreamed.
Prosecutors indicted Yoon in Jan. last year on charges of mobilizing Presidential Security Service staff to obstruct the CIO's execution of an arrest warrant. He is also accused of calling in only some Cabinet members just before the Dec. 3 emergency martial law declaration to create the appearance of a Cabinet meeting, thereby infringing on the deliberation rights of Cabinet members who could not attend.
The first trial found that Yoon effectively mobilized the security service like private soldiers to block the execution of a lawful warrant. Regarding the declaration of emergency martial law, it also held that he convened only some Cabinet members without following normal Cabinet procedures, infringing on the deliberation rights of the remaining members. It therefore sentenced Yoon to five years in prison.
The court also found Yoon guilty of drafting and discarding a backdated proclamation after the lifting of martial law to make it appear the emergency martial law had been declared through lawful procedures, and of ordering, through the Presidential Security Service, the deletion of secure phone call records of a military commander. However, it found him not guilty on parts of the charges of using false official documents and parts of the abuse of power related to responding to foreign media.
The key issue on appeal is whether the obstruction of the CIO's execution of an arrest warrant can be seen as interference with official duties beyond the scope of the president's legitimate security command. Whether the Cabinet meeting just before the declaration of emergency martial law was a substantive deliberative procedure or merely the creation of a formal façade is also a major point of contention. Another focus is whether the first-trial guilty framework—including the order to delete secure phone records and the drafting and discarding of the backdated proclamation—will be maintained on appeal.
The special counsel investigating the Dec. 3 emergency martial law incident sought a 10-year prison term for Yoon on appeal. Yoon's side, by contrast, has argued that the first trial's core legal findings were wrong and that neither the obstruction of the arrest warrant's execution nor the infringement of Cabinet members' deliberation rights constitutes a crime.
This ruling is a watershed on whether the appeals court will uphold the first guilty verdict among trials related to emergency martial law. If the appellate court maintains the first-trial judgment as is, the criminal liability assessment surrounding Yoon's obstruction of the CIO's arrest and the illegality of the martial law procedures is expected to weigh more heavily. Conversely, if it reaches different legal conclusions on some charges, it could affect the remaining trials related to emergency martial law.