American turned South Korean TV celebrity Robert Holley nabbed for crystal meth use, as Seoul cracks down on drugs
- His arrest, days after two members of powerful business families were targeted, highlights the renewed attention being paid by authorities to drug use
Formerly an American citizen, Robert Holley, 58, became naturalised a South Korean and built a profile discussing South Korean celebrity culture. But on Tuesday, broadcast images showed Holley covering his face with a black baseball cap and a medical mask while being led from Gyeonggi Southern Provincial Police Agency to a cell in the Suwon Nambu police station.
“I am sorry,” he told reporters before being driven away. “I have a heavy heart.”
He was taken into police custody on Monday, charged with purchasing the banned substance online, a police detective said.
“We’ve collected urine and hair samples and sent them to forensic authorities to determine whether he used the drug,” the detective told the South China Morning Post.
Holley first came from California to South Korea in 1978 as a Christian missionary before returning to the US to study law. He returned to South Korea in 1986 and married a Korean woman the following year. He founded an international school in Gwangju in 1996 and gave up his US citizenship to become a naturalised South Korean and adopted a Korean name, Ha Il. He also began appearing regularly on television as a commentator, speaking fluently in the Korean dialect of Busan.
MBC TV, one of the country’s three major networks, said Holley would be edited out of its Radio Star programme that had featured him.
Two members of powerful family-run conglomerates, known as chaebol, have also been targeted in the past week for purchasing and consuming marijuana, highlighting the renewed attention being paid by authorities to drug use.