A district court on Wednesday sentenced a son of convicted Hanwha Group Chairman Kim Seung-youn to eight months in prison with a two-year stay of execution for smoking marijuana.

The Incheon District Court handed down the suspended sentence to the 28-year-old defendant, the second of the disgraced chairman's three sons, for smoking marijuana four times between November 2010 and July 2012.

The junior Kim was also ordered to undergo 40 hours of treatment program and pay a fine of 400,000 won ($380).

Under criminal law, those convicted of smoking or carrying the drug can face punishment of up to five years in prison or 50 million won in fines.

The younger Kim was involved in a high-profile scandal in 2007 when his father was convicted of assaulting bar workers to avenge him. The chairman ordered his bodyguards and local gangsters to kidnap and beat up the bar workers after the younger Kim was injured in a fistfight.

Last week, the chairman received a suspended prison term in a retrial for using company money to pay back debts of other firms he was running under borrowed names, causing hundreds of billions of won in losses to Hanwha Group, South Korea's 10th-largest family-controlled conglomerate. (Yonhap)