Hwang Ha-na (37), granddaughter of the founder of Namyang Dairy Products, who was brought to trial on charges of administering methamphetamine to acquaintances, was sentenced to a fine in the first trial and released.

On the 9th, Presiding Judge Park Jun-seop of Criminal Division 3 at the Anyang Branch of the Suwon District Court sentenced Hwang, indicted on charges including violating the Narcotics Control Act (psychotropic substances), to a fine of 40 million won and ordered the forfeiture of 20,000 won.

The judge stated, “Although the defendant committed another offense not long after serving a prison term for the same type of crime, considering that the injections were administered at the request of acquaintances and that the amount of methamphetamine used was relatively small, the relative seriousness of the crime is not great.”

He added, “We also took into account that her departure overseas after the investigation began appears to have been an attempt to escape social attention and pressure rather than to evade the investigation, and that she did not inject the remaining methamphetamine into herself after administering it to an acquaintance.”

After the sentencing, when Judge Park ordered her release, Hwang covered her face and shed tears.

Hwang was indicted and detained on charges that in July 2023, at an apartment in Gangnam, Seoul, she urged two acquaintances to take methamphetamine and personally injected them with a syringe. When police began a search and seizure targeting one of her two accomplices, she fled to Thailand in December of the same year.

After that, even after her passport was invalidated and she became the subject of a red notice, she did not return to Korea but instead illegally entered Cambodia and stayed there. Late last year, Hwang expressed her intention to turn herself in, and Korean police traveled to Cambodia and arrested her aboard a Korean flag carrier at Phnom Penh International Airport.

In 2015, Hwang was charged with drug use and in 2019 received a one-year prison sentence, suspended for two years. The following year, she was indicted for using drugs again during the suspension period and, in 2022, was sentenced by the Supreme Court to one year and eight months in prison.