By Bongiwe Dlamini

MBABANE:South Korea’s Special Prosecutor has indicted former President Yoon Suk Yeol on new charges related to his short-lived imposition of martial law last year including aiding an enemy State, Aljazeera reported on Monday morning.

It has been reported that, Prosecutors opened a special investigation earlier this year to examine whether Yoon ordered drone flights over North Korea to provoke Pyongyang and strengthen his effort to declare martial law.

But Prosecutor Park Ji-young told reporters on Monday that, the Special Counsel team had charged Yoon with “benefitting the enemy in general” as well as abuse of power.

Yoon and others allegedly conspired to create conditions that would allow the declaration of emergency martial law, thereby increasing the risk of inter-Korean armed confrontation and harming public military interests.

Park added that compelling evidence had been found in a memo written by Yoon’s former counter-intelligence commander in October last year, which pushed to “create an unstable situation or seize an arising opportunity”.

The memo said the military should target places “that must make them(North Korea) lose face so that a response is inevitable, such as Pyongyang” or the major coastal city of Wonsan, Park said.

Yoon was removed from office by the Constitutional Court in April and is on trial for insurrection and other charges stemming from his failed martial law declaration, if found guilty, he could be sentenced to death.

Yoon has said consistently he never intended to impose military rule but declared martial law to sound the alarm about wrongdoing by opposition parties and to protect democracy from “anti-State” elements.