Robert Holley


Robert Bradley Holley, also known by the Korean name Ha Il, is a naturalized South Korean lawyer and television personality. A native of California and a former U.S. citizen, Holley relinquished his birth citizenship in 1997 in order to take South Korean citizenship.

Career

Holley first came to South Korea in 1978 as a missionary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, remaining there for two years. He returned to the country in 1982 to study at Yonsei University, and after graduating from West Virginia University in 1987 with a J.D. degree, began pursuing a legal career in South Korea. He founded the Kwangju Foreign School in 1996. He began his rise to television stardom in the early 2000s, becoming well known for his spoken Korean which showed heavy influence from the Gyeongsang dialect spoken in his adopted hometown of Busan.

Personal life

Holley is a descendant of William Bradford, one of the signatories of the Mayflower Compact. He is married to a South Korean woman, with whom he has three sons; the eldest was born in 1988. He decided to naturalize as a South Korean citizen in 1997, which required him to give up his U.S. citizenship. He has described this as a difficult decision, especially since at the time South Korea was not a member of the U.S. Visa Waiver Program; a U.S. consular official tried to discourage him from giving up citizenship, threatening that he might not be able to get a visa to return to his country of birth, but Holley decided to go through with it in the end. A notice confirming his loss of U.S. citizenship was published in the Federal Register in February 1998. He is a close friend of Lee Joon-gi, who would rise to fame in the mid-2000s as a film actor.
Holley was arrested by the Cyber Investigation Division of the Gyeonggi-do Southern Region Police Department for suspicion of using methamphetamine pursuant to the Narcotics Control Act of South Korea on April 10, 2019. However, he was released on April 10, 2019 following a ruling from the court stating that they felt there was a low chance of him destroying evidence. His case was referred to the prosecution on May 1, 2019.
On August 29, 2019, Holley was sentenced to one-year prison sentence suspended for two years of probation and 40 hours of drug treatment at the Seoul Western District Court for violations of the NCA. The sentence was taken to consideration that Holley expressed regret for using methamphetamine.