Actor Yoo Ah-in (real name Eom Hong-sik) was sentenced to one year in prison, with a two-year suspended sentence, by the Supreme Court on the 3rd for habitual drug use.
On the 3rd, the Supreme Court's first division (Chief Justice Ma Yong-joo) rejected the prosecution's appeal regarding Yoo's indictment for violating the Narcotics Control Act (stimulants) and upheld the lower court's ruling of one year in prison with a two-year suspended sentence.
Yoo was indicted without detention in October 2023 for allegedly using propofol 181 times between September 2020 and March 2022, and for receiving illegal prescriptions for sleeping pills 44 times under another person's name from May 2021 to August 2022. Additionally, he is under investigation for smoking cannabis in the U.S. in January 2022 and for allegedly teaching an acquaintance to smoke cannabis. When the police began investigating drug use, he allegedly attempted to destroy evidence and pressured a YouTuber who had testified about his cannabis use to retract their statement.
In the first trial, on September 3rd last year, Yoo was sentenced to one year in prison and fined 2 million won, and was taken into custody. The court recognized Yoo's cannabis use, habitual use of medical narcotics, and habitual purchase under others' names as guilty, but ruled him innocent of the charges of teaching cannabis use and evidence destruction. Both Yoo and the prosecution appealed the first trial ruling.
The second trial had the same determinations of guilt and innocence as the first but reduced the sentence on February 18th to one year in prison with a two-year suspended sentence and a fine of 2 million won, accepting Yoo's side's argument that the sentence was too harsh. Accordingly, Yoo was released after five months in detention at the Seoul Detention Center. The Supreme Court also deemed the second trial's decision correct.