‘상습의 늪’에 빠진 윤창호법 1호 연예인, 손승원의 끝없는 추락 > K-wave Trends

Son Seung-won's history of drunk driving is too severe in number and severity to be dismissed as a one-off incident of bad luck. His deviance, which began with two drunk driving arrests in 2015, grew out of control in 2018, leading to a drunken hit-and-run accident committed while his license was revoked. At the time, he was over 0.2% intoxicated and crashed into a taxi and ran away. Afterwards, he did not stop and caused another accident while drinking without a license, causing public outrage. Public criticism reached its peak as attempts to deceive the investigation process were even revealed, such as forcing a passenger to change drivers immediately after the accident.

The key point of this first trial sentence is that he did not reflect at all despite his past punishment. Last November, the incident in which he drove backwards on Gangbyeonbuk-ro while drunk with a blood alcohol level of 0.165% proves that he was still enjoying dangerous deviations. Immediately after the incident, he falsely claimed that the substitute driver had abandoned the car, and attempted to cover up the evidence in a meticulous and despicable manner, including ordering his girlfriend to destroy the black box storage device. This situation can be said to be clear evidence of how empty the appeal for leniency and reflection he submitted during the trial were.

What is even more shocking is that he treated the law with contempt even before the trial. Even just six days before his first trial on his fifth drunk driving charge, he had the audacity to drive a vehicle without a license and go to a bar. This is a direct challenge to the judicial system and suggests that the crime of drunk driving has become a habit of his life. The prosecution's request for four years in prison can be interpreted as going beyond simply punishment for this case and containing a message of social warning that repeat offenders should no longer be neglected.

The ‘Yoon Chang-ho Act’, which was applied to Son Seung-won in the past, is a law enacted to impose strong punishment on casualties caused by drunk driving. At the time, he overturned the first trial's not guilty verdict and was sentenced to 1 year and 6 months in prison by the appeals court. As a result, he faced the ironic situation of being exempt from military service under the Enforcement Decree of the Military Service Act. Amid public suspicion that the legal punishment did not completely wash away the weight of the crime, he repeated the same mistake again and brought himself out of the entertainment industry. His actions of abandoning even the minimum laws that a citizen should follow, let alone his sense of responsibility as a public figure, have been left as a painful record.