China executes a South Korean national for drug trafficking nine years after he was arrested with 5kg of crystal meth – despite Seoul’s pleas to reconsider the death penalty

China has executed a South Korean national for drug trafficking nine years after he was arrested for possession of five kilograms of methamphetamine.

Despite South Korea’s request that the execution be reconsidered, it was the first time such a sentence had been carried out on a citizen of that country in nearly a decade.

A court in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou yesterday “justly passed a verdict and executed the South Korean defendant … for drug trafficking,” Beijing’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

“When suspects of different nationalities commit crimes on Chinese territory, Chinese law will be applied equally,” it added.

Beijing said the person, whom Chinese officials called Jiang – which would be rendered Kang in Korean – had protected his “legitimate rights and interests.”

But a Seoul Foreign Ministry official said the country regrets the decision to continue with the death penalty.

“The government has made multiple requests through various channels for reconsideration or postponement of the execution on humanitarian grounds,” the official said.

It is China’s first execution of a South Korean drug offender in nine years, the South Korean news agency Yonhap reports.

According to Yonhap, the person was arrested in China in 2014 in possession of five kilograms of methamphetamine. He was sentenced to death in 2019, the agency said.

China, where most of the world’s executions are carried out, often uses the death penalty by lethal injection for very serious crimes. More than 1,000 executions were carried out last year, according to Amnesty International.

China’s legal system is tightly controlled by the ruling Communist Party, and courts have a nearly 100 percent conviction rate in criminal cases.

Like many countries in the region, China has strict drug laws and several foreigners have been sentenced to death for human trafficking in recent years.

In 2020, an Australian was sentenced to death in China for drug trafficking.

According to Chinese media, he was arrested at Guangzhou airport in December 2013 with more than 7.5 kilograms of methamphetamine in his luggage.

And in 2019, China sentenced to death two Canadian citizens accused of drug trafficking at a time when relations with Ottawa were collapsing.

Seoul said Friday’s execution was “unrelated to the relationship between China and South Korea.”