Driver fined after fatally striking man lying in road at 1:30 a.m.

A South Korean court on Tuesday fined a 33-year-old driver 5 million won ($3,374) for fatally striking a man who was lying in the road at night.

The Gwangju District Court found the defendant guilty of negligent driving, while taking into account that the accident may have been difficult to foresee and that he had separately paid 200 million won ($134,889) in settlement to the victim’s family.

The driver fatally struck a 72-year-old man with a passenger car at around 1:30 a.m. on Aug. 8, 2024, at an intersection near the entrance to an apartment complex in Buk-gu, Gwangju. The victim had been lying on the road for unknown reasons.

Prosecutors argued that, despite the difficulty of anticipating such a situation, the defendant failed to come to a full stop before entering the intersection and did not properly check the road ahead or to either side.