For Chung Heesun, a veteran forensic scientist and former head of the National Forensic Service (NFS), it was another signal that South Korea’s long-held belief in being a drug-free society is rapidly eroding.
“He didn’t even know he had stabbed his mother,” Chung said, recalling the forensic findings. “That’s why drugs are terrifying — they destroy judgment.”
Now a chaired professor of forensic science at Sungkyunkwan University, Chung is regarded as one of South Korea’s leading authorities on toxicology and drug detection.
She warns that drugs have quietly permeated everyday life, reshaping social attitudes and lowering psychological barriers — particularly among young people.
Language, she argues, is part of the problem.
Food and beverage products increasingly adopt the word mayak — meaning “drug” in Korean — to emphasize addictiveness, from “mayak gimbap” to “mayak coffee.” What may seem like playful marketing, Chung says, has deeper consequences.
“That’s how people become desensitized,” she said. “We, as adults, must stop using those words.”
Chung’s own career in forensic science began unexpectedly. As a university student, she attended a lecture introducing the work of the NFS — an institution she had not even known existed.
Despite friends discouraging her from entering what they viewed as a grim profession focused on autopsies, she joined immediately after graduation.
The work proved intellectually absorbing. Over the years, Chung helped crack some of South Korea’s most complex criminal cases, including the 1995 death of pop singer Kim Sung-jae. In that case, she identified a rare animal anesthetic after analyzing more than 130,000 substances.
“The intellectual thrill of discovering an unknown substance,” she said, “that’s the greatest satisfaction a scientist can feel.”
But the landscape of drugs has grown far more complex. South Korea, once widely described as a drug-free nation, no longer meets that definition. To qualify, drug offenders must number fewer than 20 per 100,000 people. Today, that figure has more than doubled to above 40.
According to the Korea Customs Service, drug smuggling cases involving air travelers reached 557 from January to November this year — nearly triple the figure from the same period a year earlier.
President Lee Jae Myung acknowledged the severity of the issue in November, instructing the National Intelligence Service to “fully commit all capabilities” to dismantling domestic drug networks. He even raised the possibility of launching an independent narcotics investigation agency.
The “2024 White Paper on Narcotics Crimes,” released by the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office in June, shows that 103,231 drug offenders were recorded over the past five years — an average of more than 20,000 annually. Last year alone, about 23,000 offenders were detected, marking the second consecutive year the figure exceeded 20,000.
Chung attributes the rapid spread to increasingly sophisticated production and distribution methods.
“There are about 1,400 types of designer drugs now,” she said. “They tweak the chemical structure slightly, making them nearly impossible to detect.”
Even advanced forensic techniques have limitations. Hair testing, widely used to trace drug use, can fail to detect one-time consumption — especially if hair has been repeatedly bleached or dyed. Analysts typically test hair at the crown, which grows about one centimeter per month, allowing investigators to reconstruct a timeline of use.
Teenage girls, Chung noted, are becoming particularly vulnerable. Diet pills marketed as performance-boosting or slimming aids often serve as a gateway.
“It starts with curiosity,” she said. “But it becomes dependency.”
She is firmly opposed to cannabis legalization, describing marijuana as a stepping-stone drug rather than a harmless endpoint.
“People rarely stop at marijuana,” she said. “They move on to something stronger. It never ends there.”
Chung’s commitment to public education remains central to her work. She recently returned to her alma mater, Sookmyung Women’s University, to deliver a special lecture — and was struck by the packed hall.
“The students were so earnest,” she said. “It was touching.”
She recalled her own student days, when she served as vice president of the student council, an era when campus leadership structures borrowed heavily from military terminology.
“I was like a brigadier general,” she said with a smile. “The student council president was the division commander.”
Occasionally, she sees the long arc of her influence. After one lecture, a former student told her she had pursued pharmacy and later joined the NFS after reading Chung’s book.
“Just one student like that,” Chung said, “makes every talk worthwhile.”
Some of her most enduring professional ties were forged abroad. In 1989, as a junior analyst, Chung applied for the British government’s Chevening Scholarship. Her request initially faced resistance within the NFS — no woman, let alone an unmarried one, had studied abroad before. She persisted.
A British Embassy official, Warwick Morris, kept her scholarship slot open. Chung later studied forensic science at King’s College London.
Years later, Morris returned to Seoul as British ambassador. By then, Chung was deputy director of the NFS. He later presented her with a British royal honor on behalf of Queen Elizabeth II. The two still exchange Christmas letters, and Chung visits his home whenever she is in London.
“Science shouldn’t intimidate anyone,” she said. “If a museum can make it approachable, that’s my next mission.”
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