moA few weeks ago we did a video about drunk driving in Korea
which led people to ask this week's question
about drug use in Korea, so today we're gonna go over some of the stats.
Tell you how Korea differents from the rest of the world
and also tell you some of the stories that we've seen while we've been living here.
Question: should I come to Korea and just do a bunch of drugs?
NO dummy!
Question: I'm from a state in America where weed use is legal, is it legal in Korea too?
NO dummy!
A friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of mine said that they totally did lots of drugs in Korea it should be fine for me too, right?
No dummy.
If there's one thing that you're gonna walk away from this video with, it's this
don't do drugs in Korea dummy.
You wanna get pass out drunk on the street? Fine! No problem. Drink yourself into oblivion
This is the country for that but drugs, don't do it here!
Now we're not passing judgement on all drug uses because in different parts of the world, it is legal in some places that's totally okay.
But in Korea, don't do drugs!
I feel like there have been so many movies made, was it like the beach where..
I haven't seen it.
Claire Danes goes to like Thailand and does drugs and ends up like being executed in a drug-
There are so many places in the world where you should just look into the policies.
Hey, hey.
Here's a policy, don't do drugs in Korea!
Consuming or creating or purchasing or possessing or selling or trafficking will result in up to 10 years in jail and a $100,000 fine.
But here are a few more stats for you, 55.5% of people that are arrested for drugs are done so for possessing.
29% are arrested for purchasing and 5% are arrested for selling.
Half of all drug offenders in Korea are between 30 and 39 years old which is surprising I would think that younger people do drugs
Isn't drugs like, drug use like a young people thing?
I love how we're like isn't this
I don't know I guess some of you do it in college days, it's not something you do like between in like 30s. Nevermind college, high school
Yeah! Like don't you remember in high school in Canada where you'd have like that 'hill' or like that pitt. Right.
or that area of your high school where people smoked cigarettes or smoked weed.. right.. or drink
We all had those areas. it's really not like that in Korea. It's very different.
Like, high school and middle school- it's older people who are the drug-ers here
Most drug offences that are recorded happen in either Gangnam or Yongsan, not here in Hongdae
which is the cooler, artsier area, not drugs here. This is the good part of town.
And for those of you that are travelling to Korea. If you do wind up getting arrested for drugs here you'll be deported and fined up to $5,000.
They will kick you out of the country.
Yeah, and that's if you're -pretty much I think- lucky, because we've heard stories of people going to jail.
and they're in jail as we speak right now.
Don't do it dummy- Don't do it!
otherwise here's something really interesting about drug use in korea
Do you know what the number one most used drug is here?
it's not cocaine
its not weed
but it's f****** meth
METH!!!
why would you do meth?
haven't you seen the internet with before and after pictures?
you know, meth not even once, you get messed up from doing meth.
Don't do it!!
Listen. Do you think it is because we grew up with like, anti-drug campaigns.
Well...I don't know
We had like...we talked about this in the drunk driving one as well.
We had an anti-drinking campaigns.
I remember like...do you remember the this is your brain, this is your brain on drugs?
Right
where they like short- like they cut the brain and the brain short-wired and like...
but that doesn't change the fact that a lot of people on North America do marijuana
but you don't hear about meth being the number one drug in North America
Interestingly, amongst drugs confiscated in 2015, meth was rated at number one, marijuana at number two
while in 2014, the meth that was confiscated by police was almost three times the amount of marijuana
in fact, meth wasn't the number one drug for only the past two year, but over the past 30 years
where in Korea is known as phylophon(?)
I don't- I don't know what this word means
Supposedly I think it's from a Japanese term
We didn't realise this until we tried to get a, just normal over the counter stuff for our sinus infection
Pseudoephedrine
Pseudoephedrine, which is like - it's called Sudafed in Canada
In Canada, you can just go to any pharmacy and pick it up easily, no prescription needed
Yeah, there's like different levels, extra strength(?), if you have a really bad sinus infection
I usually use these on the airplanes from the air pressure when it goes down
so I tried to get in Korea, and they're like you can't have these without a prescription- you have to have a prescription
and I didn't understand why- because you could take pseudoephedrine and make meth out of it
and as we know meth is the number one drug in Korea
Now even though we're talking about how meth is the number one drug in Korea,
I don't want you to get the impression that everybody and their mom is a here in Korea
No- in fact, in 2014, 0.3% of all crimes were drug-related. It is still a very, very small amount.
To put this in perspective, in 2011, a little over 7000 people in Korea were arrested on drug-related charges.
Compare that to the U.S., where in 2010 they had roughly 1.6 million drug-related arrests.
That's a lot. A lot more than Korea
Okay, so then have we ever seen anything suspicious or sketchy in Korea?
A couple of times. Yeah? Yes
Remember that one time we totally, I think that we thought drug deal going down, but we don't really know?
We're not 100% sure, but we were with Soozee at the time and we saw some guy walking outside,
covered in tattoos, and with a tank top that had a whole bunch of cannabis leaves on it
then a car drove up, and this is during the day, the guy with the tank top walks up to the car,
the guy in the car rolls down the window, they shake each other's hands, and then they walk separate ways
that to me, either he's just really friendly, or some sh*t going down
you know what the funniest part was? We were filming our Kpop Music Monday for hangover
and we were talking about drug use at the time, so this is kind of ironic
Soozee had no idea, so like- hey Soozee, did you see that? That was probably a drug deal
in Korea, I've never really smelled any weed smoking except for one time
and I know that you people aren't going to believe me on this,
but the most weed smoke I've ever smelled in Korea was at the SMTown concert
Yep, so we were sitting in the section for like friends and family,
and then above us was like the special- the SkyBoxes, which probably should've been called the HotBoxes
because there is this giant stream of weed smoke that was just blowing right down us
and the things is, all the Korean people around us- they had no idea what the smell was
coz they don't have a frame of reference to compare it to, but for us, we know what it smells like
and up there, that's where we smelled it
I like, looked up, and you see people kinda like leaning on the railing and then going back in the room
and I was like, I know what's happening up there
and it's interesting coz we went to a YG concert before- we didn't smell anything there
but the SM concert, that's where it's at
Now, speaking of YG, this might explain to you guys why a while ago, G-Dragon gotten like such big trouble
This is still like all unconfirmed, but that issue with the funny smelling cigarette he smoked in Japan,
he was in Japan, someone have him a cigarette, but it was really weed in there and he's like
"Oh, I don't know the cigarette just smelled funny" BULLSH*T
and I'm sure you've also heard of a couple of like Kpop band people have been arrested for it, that kind of stuffs
so we're gonna talk a little bit more about famous people in Korea that got arrested or were complicated with drugs in Korea
so make sure you click on the link here if you want to read our blog post all about it
Question: what's the one thing I've learned from this video?
Did you learn that much from this video? I hope so
Can I drink and fall asleep on the ground? Totally. Would somebody rob me? Never! Okay.
but don't do drugs in Korea. Don't do drugs in Korea
so my question for you today is: what is the drug use policy like in your country? If you don't know, now is your chance to look it up!
Figure it out! Is it super super strict? Is it kinda like in the middle? or is it like, eh, no one really cares
*eyeballing you Amsterdam*
Let us know in the comment section below
Again, we're not passing judgement on drug uses here, we just know that
there are different countries and different places where you probably should and should not do drugs.
Korea is one country that you should not do drugs in
Did we mention that we're going to Seattle soon?