BTS‘ Suga has apologized to fans after revealing that he was charged with a driving under the influence charge while riding his electric scooter. The 31-year-old K-pop star wrote a lengthy X post describing the situation in which he expressed his regret over the incident.
“I am deeply sorry and deeply sorry to have to come to you with disappointing news,” he wrote. “I rode an electric scooter home after drinking at a dinner last night. I thought it was a short distance and didn’t realize that you can’t ride an electric scooter while intoxicated, so I violated the road traffic laws.”
While the rapper did not specify when or where the incident took place, the South Korean star provided a description of the incident that he said resulted from his “careless and wrong actions.” In the statement he explained, “While I was parking my electric kickboard at the front gate of my house, I fell over by myself, and as a result of the breathalyzer test conducted by a police officer nearby, my license was revoked and a fine was imposed. No one was harmed or any facilities were damaged in the process, but this is my responsibility and I have no excuses, so I bow my head and apologize to everyone.”
Suga still has a bit less than a year left on his alternative mandatory South Korean military service; he was deemed unfit for regular combat duty due to a 2020 shoulder injury.
According to The New York Times, the police officer in charge of traffic in the Yongsan district of Seoul where Suga is believed to live said that the star was found alone on the ground and was given a breathalyzer test at the police station, with is blood alcohol content above the 0.08 level that triggers license revocation.
BTS’ record label, BigHit, also issued a statement, saying, “We express our sincere apology for the incident involving BTS member Suga and his electric kickboard accident. We apologize for the disappointment caused by the artist’s inappropriate behavior. As a social service agent during his military service, he is prepared to accept any disciplinary actions from his place of work for causing a social disturbance. We will take greater care to ensure that such incidents do not happen again in the future.”
The post from Suga ended with him apologizing to “everyone who was hurt by my careless and wrong actions,” with a promise that in the future he will be “more careful in my actions to avoid this from happening again.”
Read Suga’s post below (translation provided by Google).