Former national baseball player Oh Jae-won sent to prosecution on drug use charges
It was revealed that current junior baseball players delivered sleeping pills prescribed on their behalf to Oh Jae-won (39), a former baseball player who was arrested and put on trial for habitual use of psychotropic drugs.
According to the KBO Secretariat on the 22nd, the professional baseball Doosan Bears team, where Oh Jae-won played, reported to the KBO Clean Baseball Center two weeks ago that eight of its players had prescribed sleeping pills to Oh Jae-won on their behalf.
The Doosan team announced that it conducted its own investigation to determine the related facts at the end of March when Oh Jae-won’s problem arose, and that the players involved are currently faithfully participating in the police investigation.
The identities of the Doosan players involved in the incident have not been disclosed, but it is known that they are mainly second-team players.
The Doosan club bowed its head to Yonhap News, saying, “Through this investigation, we learned that Oh Jae-won forced proxy treatment on the club’s players in 2021 and 2022 when he was active,” and “I apologize to the fans and league members.”
After reviewing the law, the KBO secretariat declined to comment, saying, “We will prepare a response plan after observing the Doosan team’s investigation and the police investigation.”
The KBO Secretariat drew a line on the need to investigate all players from the 10 KBO League teams surrounding this incident, but instead focused on investigating each club.
On the 17th, the Seoul Central District Prosecutor’s Office’s Violent Crime Investigation Department arrested and indicted Oh Jae-won on charges of violating the Act on the Management of Narcotic Drugs (Hyangjeong), violating the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Crimes (threats of retaliation, etc.), violating the Resident Registration Act, and damaging special property.
According to the prosecution, Oh Jae-won is accused of administering Philopon a total of 11 times from November 2022 to November of last year, and storing approximately 0.4g of Philopon in a fire hydrant in the hallway of an acquaintance’s apartment in April 2023.
In addition, from January of last year to March of this year, he received 2,242 tablets of the psychotropic drug ‘Stilnox’ (a sleep inducing agent containing zolpidem) from 9 acquaintances on a total of 89 occasions, and stole 20 tablets of Stilnox using the name of the acquaintance. Oh Jae-won was also charged with bribing.
Oh Jae-won is also accused of threatening an acquaintance by breaking his cell phone with a hammer and grabbing him by the collar when the acquaintance attempted to report his drug use to the police. 고스톱