Former President Yoon Suk Yeol said his December 2024 martial law declaration was intended to alert the public to what he called harmful actions by the then‑opposition party.

Yoon delivered his closing statement early Tuesday during the final hearing of his insurrection trial at the Seoul Central District Court.

After Yoon’s defense spent hours reviewing evidence and the court heard sentencing requests and final arguments, he began his statement at about 12:10 a.m. Wednesday, roughly 15 hours after the hearing opened.

Yoon dismissed the indictment as “delusion and fiction,” arguing that troops deployed to the National Assembly had been assaulted and that lawmakers were able to enter the chamber without obstruction and quickly lift the martial law order.

He said the martial law — which lasted only a few hours, the shortest in modern Korean history — had been wrongly cast as an insurrection, leading to investigations by multiple agencies and a special counsel probe that, he said, indiscriminately booked numerous officials who were faithfully carrying out their duties.

Yoon also repeated his claim that the then‑opposition Democratic Party had paralyzed state affairs by abusing its legislative power through impeachments and budgetary actions, saying he declared martial law to warn the public of a national emergency and call for efforts to address it.

Earlier in the hearing, the special counsel team sought the death penalty for Yoon, arguing that actions undermining constitutional order by senior officials should be punished more severely than in the cases of former presidents Chun Doo‑hwan and Roh Tae‑woo.