‘Beer Bottle Assault’ Jung Soo-geun... Now Booked for Assaulting Wife with Golf Club

Arrested by Police as a Suspect Caught in the Act

Former professional baseball player Jeong Su-geun (47), who was investigated for assaulting a man he met for the first time at a drinking party with a liquor bottle, has now been booked on charges of assaulting his wife. This occurred just over a month after the previous incident.

The Namyangju Southern Police Station in Gyeonggi Province announced on the 21st that Jeong was booked on charges of special assault. Jeong is accused of hitting his wife A (34) once on the forehead with a golf club while intoxicated at their home around 5 a.m. the previous day. Police responded to A’s report and arrested Jeong at the scene. However, Jeong reportedly denied the charges during the police investigation. The police have temporarily released Jeong to go home. They plan to summon him again soon to investigate the details of the case.

Former professional baseball player Jung Soo-geun [Photo by Yonhap News]

Separately, Jeong is accused of hitting a man named A twice on the head with a beer bottle at a pub in Namyangju, Gyeonggi Province, on December 21 last year. Jeong became angry after A refused his proposal to go for a third round of drinks, leading to the assault. As a result, A sustained a laceration injury to his head. The police have completed their investigation into this incident and sent Jeong to the prosecution with a recommendation for indictment without detention.

"A person who lost everything in life because of alcohol," he self-assessed

Jeong Su-geun, a graduate of Deoksu Information Industry High School, joined the OB Bears in 1995 and stayed with the team until 2003. He transferred to the Lotte Giants in 2004 and was awarded the KBO All-Star Game MVP in 2007.

During his playing career, Jeong was involved in several controversies related to assault and alcohol. In 2004, he swung a baseball bat at a citizen after drinking in Haeundae, Busan, resulting in a fine and an indefinite suspension from games. He was also involved in drunk driving and alcohol-related accidents, eventually announcing his retirement in September 2009. After retiring, he worked as a baseball commentator.

In 2013, Jeong ran a designated driver business. At that time, he wrote on his business card, "There are probably few people like me who have lost everything in life because of alcohol," adding, "I quit baseball, which I loved and was good at, and had a traffic accident, all because of alcohol." He further stated, "I started the designated driver service hoping that even if people drink, they won’t make mistakes like I did," which attracted public attention.

Additionally, Jeong was sentenced to one year in prison and taken into custody in August 2022 for unlicensed drunk driving. He was tried for driving about 2 km on a road in Namyangju, Gyeonggi Province, on September 27, 2021, at 10:50 p.m., without a driver’s license and with a blood alcohol concentration of 0.159%. Previously, Jeong had been booked three times for drunk driving between 2004 and 2016, receiving fines or suspended prison sentences. Notably, despite receiving a suspended prison sentence for unlicensed drunk driving in June 2020, he committed the same offense again.