I sold small amounts of cannabis to a few friends at my university and I've been arrested for "trafficking" — I'm a D-2 student. Is this really the same as being a dealer?

Selling cannabis to friends at cost is, under Korean law, the same offense as commercial dealing — sale is sale, and the statute's minimum of one year does not distinguish by margin. That is the hard truth the interpreter conveyed. What the law does distinguish, at sentencing, is scale, profit, duration and role, and a twenty-three-year-old who resold small amounts to four friends over six months is at the bottom of the trafficking range, where suspended sentences are common and prison is not the norm for a first offender. The warrant hearing tomorrow is the moment that shapes everything after it; detention is a real risk for a sale charge, and it is avoidable with the right file. Call your parents tonight; they can appoint counsel from Canada, and you need counsel at that hearing.

What this is under Korean law

Under Article 59 of the Narcotics Control Act (마약류관리법, mayangnyu gwalli-beop), selling cannabis, or possessing it for the purpose of sale, is punishable by imprisonment of one year or more — the same provision as manufacture and import. There is no fine option and no lesser tier for non-commercial sale. Your own purchases and use are separate counts under Article 61. Twenty grams, a scale and chats showing four buyers is a sale file; the police did not need to characterize it.

What the sentencing guidelines and the courts do with that file is another matter. A court may reduce a sentence below the statutory minimum where there are mitigating circumstances and then suspend it; for a first offender with a small scale, no organizational role, minimal profit, cooperation and remorse, that is the ordinary outcome — a sentence of around a year or more, suspended for two or three, with a treatment order. Prison sentences in cases like yours are imposed where the scale is larger, the buyer count higher, the profit real, or the defendant uncooperative.

The warrant hearing

Within 48 hours of arrest, the prosecutor applies for a detention warrant (구속영장, gusok yeongjang), and a judge holds a hearing (영장실질심사, yeongjang siljil simsa) at which the suspect is questioned and counsel is heard. For a sale charge with a statutory minimum, the prosecution's argument is the seriousness of the offense and, for a foreign national, flight risk. The answer: enrolment and a fixed dormitory or apartment address, a passport surrendered, parents who will guarantee attendance, no prior record, and — critically — a defense that shows the police already have everything: the phone, the chats, the cannabis, the buyers. A suspect who has nothing left to hide and nowhere to go is not a detention case, and judges have declined warrants for students in exactly this position.

If detained, the investigation continues in custody for up to thirty days before indictment, and bail is available after indictment. Everything is harder from inside; the hearing is the moment.

Your degree and your visa

A conviction under Article 59, even suspended, is a serious fact for a D-2 and for any future stay: drug offenses, and sale above all, are among the grounds the Immigration Office reviews for deportation, and a departure order after a suspended sentence is a realistic outcome. The university has its own disciplinary rules and may act on a conviction. Those decisions are the Immigration Office's and the university's; we do not predict them. Understand that the criminal case's outcome — the sentence, its reasoning, the finding of minimal role — is what both will read, and it is the reason to fight for the shape of the judgment and not merely to accept the charge. MEGA X handles the criminal case; where it affects your status, we coordinate with an immigration specialist as part of your defense.

What to do now, and what not to do

Tonight: call your parents; under Article 30 of the Criminal Procedure Act they may appoint counsel without your signature. Give counsel everything: the channel, the buyers, the amounts, the money. Do not contact the four friends or the channel. Do not minimize in the hearing — "at cost" is a mitigation, not a denial. Begin a treatment program the day you are released.

From a former police investigator's perspective

Student sale cases come from one buyer's statement, and by the time of arrest the police have the phone and the scale and know the size of the operation. What they are deciding is whether this is a small reseller among friends or the campus supply, and the chats have already told them. A defendant whose lawyer arrives at the warrant hearing with the buyer count, the amounts and the profit laid out — the same numbers the police have — is a defendant who has conceded the case and is asking only about detention and sentence, which is the conversation that ends with a suspended sentence. A defendant who arrives with a duty lawyer and no file is the campus supply until proven otherwise.

Tonight, not tomorrow: +82-2-522-3959 or the text consultation form.

— Hyeonghwan Chon, Managing Partner, MEGA X Law Firm Korea