"Apartment Complex Parking Lots Are Not Roads...Drunk Driving Does Not Lead to License Cancellation"

Parking Lots Inside Apartment Complexes Excluded from License Cancellation Criteria
Structural Features Such as Barriers and Controlled Access from External Roads Considered

The Supreme Court has ruled that drunk driving within an apartment complex parking lot alone does not constitute grounds for canceling a driver's license.

According to the legal community on November 15, the Supreme Court's Special Division 2 (Presiding Justice Kwon Youngjun) recently finalized a lower court ruling in favor of plaintiff A, who filed a lawsuit against the Commissioner of the Northern Gyeonggi Provincial Police Agency to overturn the cancellation of their driver's license, by dismissing the appeal without further review.

Police are conducting a drunk driving crackdown near an elementary school in Sangam-dong, Seoul.

In this civil case, rather than a criminal proceeding, the Supreme Court found no legal error in the appellate court's decision and did not accept the appeal.

The case dates back to June 2023. A, with a blood alcohol concentration of 0.12%, drove approximately 150 meters through both the above-ground and underground parking lots within an apartment complex in Namyangju, Gyeonggi Province. The police canceled A's driver's license for drunk driving, but A argued that the internal roads of the complex do not qualify as "roads" under the Road Traffic Act and thus do not provide grounds for license cancellation.

The court of first instance sided with the police, but the appellate court reached a different conclusion. The panel stated that drunk driving penalties apply only when driving on a "road," and that whether a path within a complex qualifies as a road should be determined by comprehensively considering the structure and layout of the complex, the presence of barriers and security personnel controlling access, and the configuration and usage patterns of parking spaces and passageways.

The appellate court particularly noted that the complex is separated from external roads by retaining walls and other barriers, that security guards control access for outside vehicles, and that the internal passageways in the parking lot are essentially only for vehicle parking. Based on these factors, the court ruled that the area where A drove does not constitute a "public place accessible to an unspecified number of people."

Ultimately, although the police appealed, the Supreme Court upheld the lower court's decision. As a result of this ruling, drunk driving within apartment complex parking lots is now much less likely to result in license cancellation.