BISHOPVILLE, S.C. (AP) — When J.D. Stevens flips on the lights in the shed by his South Carolina home, he feels the presence of his dad, who died nearly a decade ago. He also sees hundreds of thousands of buttons.
They are sewn onto the original button suit on the mannequin that started it all. Nearby is the Chevrolet Chevette covered in buttons of all colors, big and small. There's a walk-in outhouse with a toilet covered in buttons and a piano with buttons everywhere but the keys. There's a button-covered hearse not too far from the coffin where white buttons stand out from all the rest, spelling out “BUTTON KING.”
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Exhibits are displayed at Dalton Stevens' button museum in Bishopville, S.C., on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins)
Dalton Stevens' button museum in Bishopville, S.C., on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins)
J.D. Stevens talks about his father Dalton Stevens' button museum and all of its folk art in Bishopville, S.C., on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins)
Dalton Stevens' button hearse is seen along with video of his appearance on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" in his museum in Bishopville, S.C., on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins)
Dalton Stevens' button hearse is displayed in his museum in Bishopville, S.C., on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins)
Dalton Stevens started on the road to become the Button King one night in 1983 while battling insomnia and, after retiring, a feeling of worthlessness and withdrawal from the world. He got an epiphany to start sewing buttons onto a denim suit because, as he said, “television went off at two in the morning back then.”
Back in the 1980s, one didn't trend to the top overnight. Once Stevens finished the original button suit, a tiny newspaper in Bishopville wrote a story. Then the local TV station did its own package. Stevens kept sewing and gluing buttons and once he finished covering the entire Chevette there was a second local TV story picked up by that fledgling all-news network CNN.
National attention grew after he was featured in magazines. One day the phone rang in his Bishopville home. It was “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.”
Carson made it a point not to see Stevens in 1987 before he walked onto the stage, wearing a suit covered in 16,333 buttons — everywhere but the butt and the back of the thighs. Carson laughed at the sight. Stevens then sang a little ditty while playing his 3,005-button guitar.
“If you like the color of my clothes, would you give me buttons instead of a rose," Stevens sang with his South Carolina twang. "Buttons can be square or round. They keep my pants from falling down.”
Carson gave Stevens the honor of staying over a commercial break. Then Stevens made the king of late night roar with laughter at a joke about his three ex-wives.
“Once you make it to the Johnny Carson show one time, that's about as big as you can get without being in the movies. That was high for an old country boy like me," Stevens told South Carolina Educational Television in an early 2000s interview.
Life was never the same. He was on talk shows hosted by David Letterman, Regis Philbin and Kathie Lee Gifford and Geraldo Rivera.
Stevens and his button suit made trips to Japan and Canada. The appearances kept rolling in for two decades. Stevens' fame lasted long enough for an eponymous website to pop up. It has since disappeared.
Eventually the Button King finished all his folk art pieces and needed a place to store them. With his family's help he built a shed on his land and called it the “S.C. Button Museum.”
From the start, it's been open to the public 24/7. After Stevens died in 2016 his son kept his promise to keep the museum open.
“It makes me feel good because it’s daddy's stuff, you know.” J.D. Stevens said, remembering a couple who visited from Pennsylvania and smiled while looking around the small shed.
Nine years after the Button King died, people still visit.
J.D. Stevens will greet them if he's home. If not, they can just flip on the lights themselves and look around. The guest book shows about a dozen visitors over the past month.
It's almost exactly as the Button King left it — all the way down to the board with nails where he hung 25 buttons at a time to keep count and plan his art projects. The buttons aren't as vibrant as they once were. And the Stevens family has added extra buttons to the walls as decoration. But it is mostly the same.
One item is missing though — the second casket Stevens made.
He's buried in that one beside his wife, Ruby, who died eight years before him.
“He was an entertainer, you know," J.D. Stevens said. “He liked to entertain people except for that period where he had withdrawn, but he loved to make people laugh and so when he saw somebody smiled and it was on.”
Exhibits are displayed at Dalton Stevens' button museum in Bishopville, S.C., on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins)
Dalton Stevens' button museum in Bishopville, S.C., on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins)
J.D. Stevens talks about his father Dalton Stevens' button museum and all of its folk art in Bishopville, S.C., on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins)
Dalton Stevens' button hearse is seen along with video of his appearance on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" in his museum in Bishopville, S.C., on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins)
Dalton Stevens' button hearse is displayed in his museum in Bishopville, S.C., on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins)
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A South Korean court sentenced former President Yoon Suk Yeol to five years in prison Friday in the first verdict from eight criminal trials over the martial law debacle that forced him out of office and other allegations.
Yoon was impeached, arrested and dismissed as president after his short-lived imposition of martial law in December 2024 triggered huge public protests calling for his ouster.
The most significant criminal charge against him alleges that his martial law enforcement amounted to a rebellion, An independent counsel has requested the death sentence over that charge, and the Seoul Central District Court will decide on that in a ruling on Feb. 19.
Yoon has maintained he didn’t intend to place the country under military rule for an extended period, saying his decree was only meant to inform the people about the danger of the liberal-controlled parliament obstructing his agenda. But investigators have viewed Yoon’s decree as an attempt to bolster and prolong his rule, charging him with rebellion, abuse of power and other criminal offenses.
In Friday’s case, the Seoul court sentenced Yoon for defying attempts to detain him and fabricating the martial law proclamation. He was also sentenced for sidestepping a legally mandated full Cabinet meeting, which deprived some Cabinet members who were not convened of their rights to deliberate on his decree.
Judge Baek Dae-hyun said in the televised ruling that imposing “a heavy punishment” was necessary because Yoon hasn’t shown remorse and has only repeated “hard-to-comprehend excuses.” The judge also said restoring legal systems damaged by Yoon’s action was necessary.
Yoon’s defense team said they will appeal the ruling, which they believe was “politicized” and reflected “the unliberal arguments by the independent counsel.” Yoon’s defense team argued the ruling “oversimplified the boundary between the exercise of the president’s constitutional powers and criminal liability.”
Park SungBae, a lawyer who specializes in criminal law, said there is little chance the court would decide Yoon should face the death penalty in the rebellion case. He said the court will likely issue a life sentence or a sentence of 30 years or more in prison.
South Korea has maintained a de facto moratorium on executions since 1997 and courts rarely hand down death sentences. Park said the court would take into account that Yoon’s decree didn’t cause casualties and didn’t last long, although Yoon hasn’t shown genuine remorse for his action.
South Korea has a history of pardoning former presidents who were jailed over diverse crimes in the name of promoting national unity. Those pardoned include strongman Chun Doo-hwan, who received the death penalty at a district court over his 1979 coup, the bloody 1980 crackdowns of pro-democracy protests that killed about 200 people, and other crimes.
Even if Yoon is spared the death penalty or life imprisonment at the rebellion trial, he may still face other prison sentences in the multiple smaller trials he faces.
Some observers say Yoon is likely retaining a defiant attitude in the ongoing trials to maintain his support base in the belief that he cannot avoid a lengthy sentence but could be pardoned in the future.
On the night of Dec. 3, 2024, Yoon abruptly declared martial law in a televised speech, saying he would eliminate “anti-state forces” and protect “the constitutional democratic order.” Yoon sent troops and police officers to encircle the National Assembly, but many apparently didn’t aggressively cordon off the area, allowing enough lawmakers to get into an assembly hall to vote down Yoon’s decree.
No major violence occurred, but Yoon's decree caused the biggest political crisis in South Korea in decades and rattled its diplomacy and financial markets. For many, his decree, the first of its kind in more than 40 years in South Korea, brought back harrowing memories of past dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s, when military-backed leaders used martial law and emergency measures to deploy soldiers and tanks on the streets to suppress demonstrations.
After Yoon's ouster, his liberal rival Lee Jae Myung became president via a snap election last June. After taking office, Lee appointed three independent counsels to look into allegations involving Yoon, his wife and associates.
Yoon's other trials deal with charges like ordering drone flights over North Korea to deliberately inflame animosities to look for a pretext to declare martial law. Other charges accuse Yoon of manipulating the investigation into a marine’s drowning in 2023 and receiving free opinion surveys from an election broker in return for a political favor.
A supporter of former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol shouts slogans outside Seoul Central District Court, in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
Supporters of former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol hold signs and flags outside Seoul Central District Court, in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
A supporter of former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol waits for a bus carrying former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol outside Seoul Central District Court, in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
Supporters of former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol hold signs as police officers stand guard outside Seoul Central District Court, in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
Supporters of former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol hold signs and flags outside Seoul Central District Court, in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
Supporters of former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol hold signs outside Seoul Central District Court, in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
A picture of former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol is placed on a board as supporters gather outside Seoul Central District Court, in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
