A South Korean citizen has been executed by the Chinese authority for drug trafficking, a sentence that has not been imposed on a citizen of that country in almost a decade.
The Chinese foreign ministry made the announcement on Friday, quoting a court in Guangzhou, a city in southern China, which stated that they have ‘lawfully pronounced a verdict and executed the South Korean defendant… for drug trafficking’.
‘When defendants of different nationalities commit crimes on Chinese territory, Chinese law shall be applied equally,’ it added.
An official from Seoul’s foreign ministry confirmed to reporters on Friday, that ‘the death penalty was carried out today for a South Korean citizen who was sentenced to death for selling drugs in China.’
Chinese authorities in Beijing stated that the person, officially named Jiang in Chinese (Kang in Korean), had their ‘legitimate rights and interests’ ensured.
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South Korea expressed ‘regret that the death penalty has been carried out against our citizen.’
‘The government has made multiple requests for reconsideration or postponement of the execution on humanitarian grounds through various channels since the death sentence was announced,’ the official said.
According to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, it had been nine years since China last executed a South Korean drug offender.
Yonhap reported that in 2014, the individual was taken into custody in China for having 5 kilograms of methamphetamine in their possession.
His death sentence was pronounced in 2019, as stated by the agency.