South Korea's former first lady sentenced to 20 months in prison for corruption

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The wife of South Korea’s ousted President Yoon Suk Yeol was sentenced on Wednesday to 20 months in prison for corruption, as her husband awaits a verdict on a high-stakes rebellion charge that could result in the death penalty or life imprisonment.

Seoul Central District Court sentenced Kim Keon Hee for receiving luxury gifts like a Graff diamond necklace and a Chanel bag from the Unification Church in return for promises of political favors.

“Being closest to a president, a first lady can exert significant influence on him and is a symbolic figure who represents the country together with a president,” the court said in a televised verdict. “But the defendant exploited her position to seek personal gains.”

Kim said via her lawyers that she would “humbly accept” the court’s view and “apologizes again to everyone for causing concerns.”

The presidential couple, who have been jailed separately for months, suffered a spectacular fall from grace after Yoon’s martial law debacle in December 2024 led to his impeachment and eventually his removal from office. Yoon was handed a five-year prison term this month for defying authorities’ attempts to detain him and other charges related to the martial law decree.

Investigators say Kim was not involved in Yoon's martial law enforcement.

The 20-month sentence imposed on Kim was a surprise after independent counsel Min Joong-ki called for a 15-year prison term on three charges, including stock price manipulation, political funding law violations and accepting bribes. The court acquitted Kim of two other charges, citing a lack of evidence and other reasons.

Min's team responded that it cannot accept the ruling and will appeal to a higher court. The governing liberal Democratic Party, which led Yoon's ouster, criticized the verdict as sending a wrong signal that “abuse of power like Kim Keon Hee's can be tolerated.”

Kim’s lawyer Choi Ji-woo said Min’s investigation was politically driven. He said Kim's defense team thanked the court for its verdict but said the 20-month prison term was “relatively high.”

He said his team will discuss whether to appeal.

Kim has been in jail since August when the Seoul court approved a warrant to arrest her, citing the chance she might destroy evidence.

When Yoon was in office, Kim was embroiled in a series of scandals that severely hurt the conservative leader's approval rating and provided relentless political ammunition to his rivals. The scandals included the three charges the court dealt with on Wednesday.

Many observers speculated Yoon opted to place the country under a military rule to protect his wife from possible investigations. But after a six-month probe into Yoon’s decree, investigators led by another independent counsel, Cho Eun-suk, in December downplayed conjecture that Kim’s troubles drove Yoon to declare martial law.

Yoon plotted for over a year to declare martial law so he could eliminate his political opponents and monopolize power and there was also no evidence of Kim's involvement, Cho’s team said.

The ruling against Kim was made about three weeks before the court delivers its verdict on a rebellion charge against Yoon. Cho's team has demanded the death sentence for Yoon by viewing his martial law imposition as a rebellion.

A rebellion conviction carries the death penalty or life imprisonment. But a court could immediately commute the sentence. Experts say the court likely will sentence him to life or a lengthy imprisonment because South Korea has maintained a de-facto moratorium on executions since late 1997.

After a near-constant collision course with his liberal rivals, Yoon abruptly declared martial law on Dec. 3, 2024, vowing to eliminate “anti-state forces” and “shameless North Korea sympathizers.” He has defended his action, calling it a desperate attempt to draw public support for his fight against the Democratic Party which obstructed his agenda.

Yoon sent troops and police officers to encircle the National Assembly. But many failed to aggressively cordon off the area as thousands of people gathered, calling for Yoon’s ouster. Lawmakers, including some from Yoon's own ruling party, entered an assembly hall and voted down his decree.

Yoon was later impeached by the National Assembly, arrested by prosecutors and formally thrown out of office after a Constitutional Court ruling.

This story corrects the former first lady's name.

FILE - Kim Keon Hee, center, the wife of South Korea's ousted former President Yoon Suk Yeol, arrives at the special prosecutor's office in Seoul, South Korea, Aug. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon, File)

FILE - Kim Keon Hee, the wife of South Korea's jailed former President Yoon Suk Yeol, arrives for her first trial hearing on corruption charges at a courtroom of the Seoul Central District Court on Sept. 24, 2025 in Seoul, South Korea.(Chung Sung-Jun/Pool Photo via AP, File)

A TV screen shows a file footage of Kim Keon Hee, the wife of South Korea's former President Yoon Suk Yeol during a news program at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

A TV screen shows a live footage of Kim Keon Hee, the wife of South Korea's former President Yoon Suk Yeol, second from right, wearing a mask, during a news program, at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

FILE - South Korea's former first lady Kim Keon Hee, wife of former president Yoon Suk Yeol, arrives at a court to attend a hearing to review her arrest warrant requested by special prosecutors, in Seoul, South Korea, on Aug. 12, 2025. (Jung Yeon-je/Pool Photo via AP, File)

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)

NEW YORK (AP) — This is not the run up to the midterm elections that Republicans wanted.

A year and a half after winning the White House by promising to lower costs and end wars, Donald Trump is a wartime president overseeing surging energy costs and an escalating overseas conflict that many in his own party do not like.

He offered little clarity to a nation eager for answers this week during a prime-time address from the White House, his first since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran more than a month ago, simultaneously suggesting that the war was ending and expanding.

“Thanks to the progress we’ve made, I can say tonight that we are on track to complete all of America’s military objectives shortly, very shortly,” Trump said. “We’re going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks.”

Trump's comments come roughly six months before voters across the nation begin to cast ballots in elections that will decide control of Congress and key governorships for Trump’s final two years in office. For now, Republicans, who control all branches of government in Washington, are bracing for a painful political backlash.

“You’re looking at an ugly November,” warned veteran Republican pollster Neil Newhouse. “At a point in time when we need every break possible to hold the House and Senate, our edge is being chipped away.”

It’s hard to overstate how dramatically the political landscape has shifted.

At this time last year, many Republican leaders believed there was a path to preserve their narrow House majority and easily hold the Senate. Now they privately concede that the House is all but lost and Democrats have a realistic shot at taking the Senate.

Republicans are also struggling to coalesce around a clear midterm message on Iran.

The Republican National Committee has largely avoided the war in talking points issued to surrogates over the last month. The leaders of the party's campaign committees responsible for the House and Senate declined interview requests. Many vulnerable Republican candidates sidestep the issue, unwilling to defend or challenge Trump publicly.

The president remains deeply popular with Republican voters, and he has vocal supporters like Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

“That was the best speech I could’ve hoped for,” he wrote on social media after Trump's address on Wednesday evening. Graham said Trump “gave the American people a clear and coherent pathway forward.”

Trump made little effort to sell the conflict to Americans before the initial attack. Five weeks later, at least 13 U.S. service members have been killed and hundreds more injured. Thousands more troops have converged on the region, and the Pentagon requested $200 billion in new funding.

The Strait of Hormuz, a key passage for a fifth of the world’s oil, remains closed. The average price for a gallon of gasoline in the U.S. was $4.08 on Thursday, according to AAA, almost a full dollar higher than on President Joe Biden's last day in office.

On Wednesday, Trump insisted that gas prices would fall quickly once the war concluded but offered no solution for reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Instead, he invited skeptical U.S. allies to do it themselves.

He insisted that the war would be worth it.

“This is a true investment in your grandchildren and your grandchildren’s future,” Trump said. “When it’s all over, the United States will be safer, stronger, more prosperous and greater than it has ever been before.”

Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican who was once among Trump's most vocal allies in Congress, lashed out against his Iran policy.

“I wanted so much for President Trump to put America First. That’s what I believed he would do. All I heard from his speech tonight was WAR WAR WAR,” she wrote on social media. “Nothing to lower the cost of living for Americans.”

About 6 in 10 U.S. adults say the U.S. military action in Iran has “gone too far,” according to AP-NORC polling from March. Roughly a third approve of how he’s handling Iran overall.

The possibility of sending U.S. forces into Iran also appears politically unpalatable.

About 6 in 10 adults are “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed to deploying U.S. troops on the ground to fight Iran. That includes about half of Republicans. Only about 1 in 10 favor deploying troops.

At the same time, Trump’s approval ratings have remained consistently weak. About 4 in 10 Americans approve of how he’s handling the presidency, roughly in line with how it’s been throughout his second term.

Republican strategist Ari Fleischer, a senior aide in former President George W. Bush’s administration, acknowledged that Trump has not received the polling bump in this war that Bush got after invading Iraq.

Bush, of course, worked to build public backing for the Iraq War before going in. Immediately after the 2003 invasion, Bush's popularity soared, as did the stock market.

Public sentiment and the economy soured only after the conflict stretched on. It ultimately spanned more than eight years, spawning a generation of anti-war Republicans — and sowing the seeds of Trump's “America First” foreign policy.

“My hope is that the Trump experience is the exact opposite of the Bush experience,” Fleischer said.

He said Trump must win the war decisively and quickly to avoid a further backlash, saying there could be a “very significant political upside if things end well, oil comes down and markets rally.”

Fleischer added that Trump's actions will matter much more than his words.

“Ultimately, he is not going to get judged on his persuasion or his explanations or his assertions, he’s going to get judged on results,” he said.

Associated Press writer Linley Sanders in Washington contributed to this report.

In this image made with a long exposure, President Donald Trump speaks about the Iran war from the Cross Hall of the White House on Wednesday, April 1, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)