Woman crashes car into Jeju pharmacy while drunk, sparking outrage

The driver’s companion films the scene after a rented car driven by a woman in her 20s slammed into a ground-floor pharmacy on Jeju Island on Sept. 23. Captured from Bobaedream

A woman in her 20s driving a rented car slammed into a pharmacy on the first floor of a commercial building on Jeju Island on Sept. 23, prompting widespread anger online after a witness, believed to be a store employee, described the driver and her companion’s behavior at the scene.

A post titled “Car driven by woman in her 20s crashes into store” appeared on the online community Bobaedream on Friday. The post included security camera footage of the crash as well as a detailed account of the driver’s conduct.

The video shows a white sedan crashing into the pharmacy entrance before coming to a stop. According to the poster, the driver was a woman in her 20s, while her passenger was a woman in her 30s.

The witness wrote that the passenger “took no action after the accident, instead lighting a cigarette, spitting on the ground and chatting nonchalantly with (the driver).”

When the witness confronted the driver, asking, “This is no time to be laughing. Have you been drinking?” she replied, “We didn’t drink and we weren’t laughing. We’ll handle it. Mind your own business.”

The witness, however, said the women’s eyes and speech indicated intoxication and called the police. When officers arrived and attempted a breathalyzer test, the driver stalled the process by failing to blow properly into the device for several minutes.

Even after police switched to a new tester, she repeated the behavior, further delaying the test.

The post also claimed that during this time, the passenger expressed displeasure at the police being called, glaring at store staff, laughing in front of them and filming the store and its employees on her phone “as if mocking them.”

CCTV footage shows a driver crashing into a ground-floor pharmacy on Jeju Island on Sept. 23. Captured from Bobaedream

The witness emphasized the danger posed by the accident, noting, “The crash site was just 1.5 meters from where about 10 people, including myself, were standing. It was a hair’s breadth from turning into a fatal incident.”

The witness added that after the crash, the store received calls from people believed to be acquaintances of the women, which caused “serious psychological distress.”

Police later confirmed that the driver had a blood alcohol concentration above 0.08 percent, a level that mandates license revocation.

Jeju Dongbu Police Station booked her without detention on suspicion of drunk driving. She admitted during questioning that she “had been drinking and mistakenly caused the accident while trying to park at the building.”

This article from the Hankook Ilbo, the sister publication of The Korea Times, is translated by generative AI and edited by The Korea Times.