Even with a newborn baby... Uzbek man growing marijuana in apartment arrested

Learned Cannabis Cultivation from YouTube
Living in a High-End Apartment

A foreign national was caught by the police for cultivating, selling, and personally smoking marijuana in the apartment where he lived. On the 2nd, the Ulsan Coast Guard announced that they had arrested Mr. A (34), an Uzbek national, on charges of violating the Narcotics Control Act.

Mr. A is suspected of selling, storing, and smoking marijuana he cultivated himself between December 2022 and October 2023 in Gyeongju, Gyeongbuk, to a Central Asian middleman who dealt in marijuana sales. He sold marijuana cigarettes made from the marijuana he grew to buyers at 150,000 KRW per gram and also manufactured marijuana cigarettes by mixing marijuana with imported tobacco leaves purchased online.

Having experience smoking marijuana in his home country, Mr. A was found to have directly purchased smuggled marijuana seeds from a Ukrainian he met in Korea in 2021 or ordered them via Telegram, receiving the seeds from Ukraine through international mail.

At the time of arrest, in Mr. A’s apartment room, hay marijuana worth about 20 million KRW (121.8 g), enough for 1,000 people to smoke simultaneously, 200 marijuana cigarettes, 324 marijuana seeds, and marijuana cultivation tools were discovered.

Seized items. [Image provided by Ulsan Coast Guard]

It is especially known that he started growing marijuana after learning cultivation methods by watching overseas YouTube videos. Investigations also revealed that he referred to foreign videos to manufacture liquid marijuana with hallucinogenic components 3 to 4 times stronger than regular marijuana.

Mr. A, without a specific job, leased and drove a luxury imported car and lived in an expensive apartment. Notably, he cultivated marijuana and produced marijuana cigarettes while living with his wife and a newborn child.

The Ulsan Coast Guard confiscated all the marijuana and related items found at Mr. A’s residence and plans to expand the investigation to include those involved in smuggling marijuana seeds and other related parties.