Analysis by WorldTribune Staff, January 15, 2026 Real World News
In a legal assault on a political opponent that makes Jack Smith’s crusade against President Donald Trump look tame in comparison, special prosecutors appointed by leftist South Korean President Lee Jae-Myung want the death penalty for conservative former President Yoon Suk-Yeol.
Lee was elected president in June 2025 after a court upheld the National Assembly’s impeachment of Yoon. The National Assembly which ousted Yoon is dominated by Lee’s Democratic Party of Korea after an election which Yoon sought unsuccessfully to investigate.
“The demand for the death penalty for a former South Korean president for his abortive attempt at imposing martial law more than a year ago deepens a right-left political divide in South Korea that threatens Seoul’s ability to stand up against rising threats from North Korea,” Donald Kirk wrote in a Jan. 14 analysis for The New York Sun.
Korean office worker Chang Yong-Jin told the Sun: “We are totally divided. Nobody thinks Yoon will be executed. People will rally around him, but the country will suffer.”
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un “will be the only one to benefit from this case,” says a conservative politician, Choi Tae-Hyun, contacted by the Sun, “Yoon is innocent. North Korea builds its relationship with Russia, and we are in danger of civil war.”
Lee has been pressing Kim Jong-Un to resume dialogue with the South.
Kim “will exploit” the Yoon case, said Choe. “Their agents in the South are secretly supporting far leftists.”
Related: Report: Election transparency ‘required’ in South Korea; Leftist president looks North, July 16, 2025
Yoon, talking for 90 minutes after the prosecutor recommended the death penalty, said his foes had sought “excessive indictments” against “countless public officials who faithfully performed their duties.” The claim that he had “participated in an insurrection,” he said, was “mere delusion and fiction.”
Most observers believe Yoon will be found guilty in the case pursued by special prosecutors who have been more likened to Lee’s hired guns. Yoon “is much more likely to be sentenced to life in prison rather than death. Eventually the death penalty could be commuted, or he could be freed by a new president,” Kirk noted.
“That’s what happened to the one late president, Chun Doo-Hwan, given the death penalty for taking over the government after the assassination of the long-ruling Park Chung-Hee in October 1979 and then ordering soldiers to fire on civilians, killing nearly 200 in the southwestern city of Gwangju in May 1980,” Kirk added. “The intelligence chief who assassinated Park was hanged while Chun held power for nearly eight years before being tried himself, sentenced, and finally freed in the interests of national unity.”
Former South Korean Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun made his final statement. He’s concerned that the Republic of Korea is facing an existential crisis. He’s afraid the ROK will become a vassal state to China & turn communist like China & North Korea.
So many other Koreans feel… https://t.co/bYZ7Gv1eJt
— Tara O (@DrTaraO) January 14, 2026
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Meanwhile in Seoul: Prosecutors seek death sentence for president’s conservative predecessor added by Editor Two on
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