Kim Rahn is the managing editor of The Korea Times. Since joining the company in 2003, she has covered various beats including the presidential office, Seoul city government, the Bank of Korea and the tourism industry. In 2014, she won the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) award for her coverage of the ordeals of migrant women in Korea.
Top court orders review of drunk driving case killing Taiwanese student
The friends of Tseng Yi-lin, a Taiwanese woman killed in a drunk driving accident in Korea, talk to reporters in front of the Supreme Court, Thursday, after the court sent the case back to a lower court for review. Yonhap
By Kim Rahn
By Kim Rahn
The nation's top court has ordered a lower court to review a drunk driving case where a Taiwanese student here was killed, as a relevant law applied to the case had been ruled unconstitutional last month.
The bereaved families and the friends of the victim protested the decision, as the perpetrator is likely to get a lighter punishment if a different law is applied.
According to the Supreme Court, Thursday, it overturned a lower court ruling that sentenced the driver, Kim, 52, to eight years in jail, and sent the case to the appellate division of the Seoul Central District Court for review.
In the accident on Nov. 6 last year, Kim's car hit Tseng Yi-lin, 28, a Ph.D. student at Torch Trinity Graduate University in Seoul, who was crossing the street. Kim was driving at the speed of 80.4 kilometers per hour on a street with a speed limit of 50 kilometers. In addition, his blood concentration level was at 0.079 percent which is subject to a license suspension, and he ignored the traffic light.
The prosecution initially sought a six-year jail term, but a local and appellate courts handed down an eight year sentence, considering the fact he had been fined for drunk driving in 2012 and 2017 as well.
Related to the Kim case, the revised Road Traffic Act, called the Yoon Chang-ho Act named after a drunk driving case victim, was applied, which called for aggravated punishment of up to five years in jail or up to 20 million won ($16,800) in fines for repeat drunk driving offenses.
Yet last month, the Constitutional Court ruled this act unconstitutional, stating that the vague definition of “repeat” offences did not take into account how far apart the multiple violations are between each other.
With the Yoon Chang-ho Act being rejected, the top court told the appellate court to review the case by applying a different law. It is the first time that the Supreme Court has sent a drunk driving case to a lower court since the unconstitutionality decision.
For the appellate court review, a law on ordinary drunk driving without aggravated punishment clauses is expected to be applied, which is highly likely to result in a lighter penalty.
Tseng's friends, who have taken care of the legal battle on behalf of her family, protested against the court decision. “Taiwan has been recently pushing to introduce stronger punishments for drunk driving, but Korea is going backward. This is shameful,” they said in a statement after the decision. “Her parents told us that they were so exhausted and in deep despair.”