[INTERVIEW] It's now or never to combat illegal drugs

Kim Hee-jun, a partner at the Seoul-based law firm LKB & Partners, poses on the rooftop of the law firm, Tuesday. The building behind him in the background is the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office where he worked previously before joining LKB & Partners in 2017. Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk

Renowned lawyer, who prosecuted felony drug crimes, calls for a paradigm shift from crackdown on drug offenders to therapeutic jurisprudence on substance abuse

By Kang Hyun-kyung

"Buying illegal drugs online has become as easy as ordering a pizza over the phone."

With those comments, Kim Hee-jun, a partner at the Seoul-based law firm, LKB & Partners, highlighted the fact that easy access to prohibited drugs has played a critical part in the rapid increase of drug crimes involving teenagers.

"Once teens experience illicit drugs, driven by curiosity or whatever, they are prone to addiction as most of the drugs distributed in Korea are highly addictive and their reliance on substances becomes unstoppable," he said during an interview with The Korea Times on Tuesday at the law firm in southern Seoul.

He said substance use disorders among teens has surged over the past decade and urged law enforcement officials to take appropriate measures to stop the trend.

A prosecutor-turned-lawyer, Kim, 56, has become the most-sought-after expert in drug crimes after President Yoon Suk Yeol announced a war on illegal drugs last year.

His smartphone was ringing constantly during the interview. He said most of the missed calls were from journalists seeking his comments via phone or asking if he is available for sit-down interviews.

On top of journalists, Kim is also popular among content creators. He received an invitation on Tuesday from an unnamed director to join a debate show, which will be released on one of the global over-the-top platforms, if the proposal gets the nod from them and other things go as planned.

Kim is juggling two jobs to balance his work at the law firm as a partner and as a popular commentator on drug crimes, which reflects growing public interest in the Yoon government's anti-drug campaign.

The lawyer said the government has no time to waste.

"Combating drug crimes is something that needs to be done now or never," he said.

Just like time is a critical factor in stroke treatment, he said the nation needs timely and effective policy intervention to combat drug crimes, because the number of such offenses can escalate beyond control.

He reminded this reporter of recent media reports about a middle schoolgirl who was caught purchasing illegal drugs on the dark web to try them out of curiosity.

"She was quoted as saying that finding drug sellers on the internet was easy and she received the drugs she purchased an hour after placing her order online. There was another media report about a different teen who was arrested after trafficking drugs online. He hired adults as middle people delivering drugs to consumers."

Kim said there has been "a paradigm shift" in drug crimes, emphasizing that drug users are becoming younger and drug crimes are becoming more "innovative."

About a decade ago, he said people in their 40s accounted for the lion's share of drug crimes. However, he added that twenty-somethings have now become the age group that consumes the most illegal drugs.

"The situation gets even more serious if you look at the figures for teenagers. Over the past 10 years, teen drug offenders have increased 12 times," he said.

The Yoon government's drive to combat illicit drugs has become a political football as the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea and the minister of justice were caught in a war of words.

Choo Mi-ae, who served as justice minister during the previous Moon Jae-in government, accused incumbent Justice Minister Han Dong-hoon of politicizing the war against illicit drugs.

"He should stop engaging in drug politics. He had better step down from the Cabinet post and become a politician," she wrote on Facebook.

Her social media post was a response to Han's previous remarks that the Moon government was responsible for an increase of drug crimes, because the former president cut the prosecution off from drug crime investigations while pushing for a reform to realign its jurisdiction.

Choo claimed the justice minister's criticism of the Moon government is groundless.

Han dismissed his predecessor's allegations.

"I find it difficult to follow her rationale. I said I would do my utmost to end drug crimes to protect teenagers and other citizens. Then, she suddenly blamed me for doing politics. I don't understand what she was saying," he refuted.

Lawyer Kim Hee-jun poses during an interview with The Korea Times at law firm LKB & Partners in Seoul's southern district of Seocho, Tuesday. Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk

Kim said the crackdown on drug offenders is necessary, but he noted that arrests should not be the ultimate goal of a war against illegal drugs.

"You will never succeed in curbing drug crimes if you focus only on cracking down on the criminals. Arrests and incarceration rates can go up, but putting the criminals behind bars itself doesn't end the crime," he said.

He said illicit drugs are highly addictive and thus recidivism rates are high.

Kim called for a holistic approach, noting that substance abuse, in most cases, is not something offenders can overcome alone without coordinated support from the community.

"Substance use disorder is a disease and therefore it should be treated," he said. "Education is the most effective way to prevent substance abuse. If demand for drugs is low or nonexistent, there will be no market for drug trafficking."

Regarding the timing of the awareness program, he said the sooner, the better.

The educational authorities need to target elementary school students and launch a program to raise their awareness of illicit drugs' damaging effects on people's physical and mental health, he said.

Star prosecutor

Kim joined LKB & Partners in 2017 as an attorney after wrapping up his 22 years of service in the prosecution.

During his two decades of work as a prosecutor, he handled drug crimes for several years, first as a junior prosecutor at the Gwangju District Prosecutors' Office and later at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office as a senior prosecutor.

He dealt with several high-profile cases, which made him famous among the Korean public.

In 2010 when he was in charge of the division of felony drug crimes at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office, Kim investigated and indicted the Korean-born drug lord Cho Bong-haeng, who was operating in the tiny Latin American country of Suriname, after he was extradited to Korea. Cho was sentenced to 10 years in prison. He died in 2016 in the middle of his prison term after he was taken to a hospital in Ulsan as chronic hypertension worsened his health.

Cho's story was adapted into the popular Netflix series, titled "Narco-Saints," released last year.

Kim received the media spotlight in 2019 while the nation reeled from the aftershock of the Burning Sun scandal. The Burning Sun nightclub in Seoul's posh southern district was found to be rife with substance abuse and sex crimes, involving several celebrities in the entertainment industry, including K-pop singers.

The drug gamma-Hydroxybutyrate (GHB), a colorless, odorless drug known to be used as a "date-rape drug," was found to have been used to tranquilize victims at the nightclub.

GHB was one of the two illicit drugs found by Kim when he investigated a drug crime in the southwestern city of Gwangju. The other illicit drug he found was propofol.

In 1998, Kim seized two large bottles containing a colorless fluid that looked like water. The offenders claimed it was a liquid type of methamphetamine. Kim said he became suspicious because he knew methamphetamine came only in a powder form.

He sent a sample of the liquid to the United States for drug information referral. Two months later, he received the results from the U.S. authorities, which said that it was a bourgeoning illegal drug widely used among young people in the U.S. as a date-rape drug. It was the first time GHB had been discovered by investigators in Korea.