"Warrant for Former Baseball Player Im Hye-dong in 'Kim Ha-seong Extortion' Case Denied Again"

Court: "Need to Guarantee Right to Defense"

The arrest warrant for former baseball player Im Hye-dong, who is accused of extorting a large sum of money from Major Leaguer Kim Ha-sung in a 'drinking party assault' incident, has been rejected again.

Former baseball player Im Hye-dong. [Photo by Yonhap News]

On the 4th, Shin Young-hee, the judge in charge of warrants at the Seoul Central District Court, after conducting a substantive examination of the warrant for Im, who is accused of extortion, stated, "It is necessary to guarantee the suspect's right to defense, and since the last arrest warrant request was dismissed, there is little reason to believe there is a risk of flight or evidence tampering." She added, "Considering the circumstances of the case, the dispute with the complainant, the attitude during investigation and interrogation, as well as the suspect's residence and family relations, it is difficult to recognize grounds for detaining the suspect at this stage," and thus dismissed the arrest warrant. A similar warrant was not issued for Park Mo, the former team manager of Im's previous agency, for similar reasons.

Earlier, the police applied for an arrest warrant for Im in January, but the court dismissed it, stating that "additional evidence is needed." According to the police, in February 2021, Im got into a physical altercation with Kim at a bar in Gangnam, Seoul, and then used this as leverage to extort 400 million won in two installments under the pretext of a settlement. At that time, Im worked as a manager at the agency to which Kim belonged. It is reported that Im demanded additional money from Kim, but Kim refused.