An extraordinary development has shaken the diplomatic climate on the Korean Peninsula: South Korean President Lee Jae Myung is reportedly considering a formal apology to North Korea over accusations that his predecessor, Yoon Suk Yeol, intentionally heightened military tensions to justify his brief, controversial declaration of martial law in December 2024.
The potential apology centres on explosive new evidence suggesting Yoon’s administration may have engaged in deliberate provocations, including unauthorized drone flights and provocative cross-border leafleting, to create a manufactured security crisis just before declaring martial law.
The suspicion focuses on events leading up to Yoon Suk Yeol’s two-week martial law declaration, which was ultimately revoked amid mass protests and legislative opposition.
Intelligence sources also suggest the ousted administration may have facilitated unauthorized military drone incursions into North Korean airspace, designed to elicit a visible, aggressive response from Pyongyang. Further allegations claim that the previous government secretly coordinated with hardline anti-North Korean groups to launch high-altitude balloons carrying highly provocative leaflets across the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), a tactic known to trigger immediate military warnings from the North.
The intelligence dossier argues that these actions were intended to provide “credible military justification” for the martial law decree, which Yoon’s critics claimed was a political manoeuvre to silence opposition and stifle ongoing corruption probes.
President Lee Jae Myung is now caught in a high-stakes ethical and diplomatic bind. While an apology could significantly de-escalate tensions with North Korea and open doors for renewed dialogue, it carries massive domestic political risk.
An apology would be a powerful, unilateral signal of good faith to Pyongyang, potentially stabilizing cross-border relations, which have been volatile since the martial law period.
However, admitting that a former democratically elected South Korean president intentionally provoked the North, their existential enemy, would provide the opposition party of the ousted Yoon Suk Yeol with a powerful political weapon, likely leading to accusations of weakness and political appeasement toward the North.
The primary motive for Lee’s deliberation is said to be the need to restore global credibility in South Korea’s security apparatus, following the international embarrassment caused by the martial law fiasco and the subsequent constitutional impeachment proceedings against Yoon.
A formal apology from Seoul to Pyongyang over internal domestic political machinations would be an unprecedented moment in inter-Korean relations, potentially shifting the focus of instability from North Korean aggression to South Korean internal political corruption.
The decision is expected to be announced before President Lee’s planned address to the National Assembly next week, as international stakeholders nervously monitor the political tightrope walk in Seoul.
