Foreigners in southern coast towns busted for drugs

Drug crime is spreading among foreign nationals working along the southern coast of Korea, police say. Tongyeong Coast Guard apprehended some 15 Vietnamese nationals suspected of involvement in drug dealing and drug use.

Tongyeong Coast Guard in South Gyeongsang apprehends foreign nationals working as fishing boat crewmembers for alleged drug offenses.

Drug crime is spreading among foreign nationals working along the southern coast of Korea, police say.

Tongyeong Coast Guard apprehended some 15 foreign nationals suspected of involvement in drug dealing and drug use.

Of the 15 suspects, seven were detained and transferred to Tongyeong Coast Guard for allegedly dealing drugs.

The other eight, including three fishing boat crew members and three bar workers, are being investigated without detention for using drugs.

The Coast Guard seized drugs worth 65 million won ($48,600) from the apprehended foreign nationals, including 304 tablets of ecstasy and 11.95 grams of ketamine.

The seven detained foreign nationals are accused of distributing and selling drugs to foreigners working as fishing boat crew members and welders in Tongyeong, South Gyeongsang, from 2018 to April last year.

Drugs seized by Tongyeong Coast Guard [TONGYEONG COAST GUARD]

According to the Coast Guard, drug dealers in Daegu supplied the drugs to intermediaries in the southeastern cities of Gimhae and Busan, who in turn sold them to bars and clubs in Geoje.

Finally, the drugs were then sold to foreigners working in Geoje, Tongyeong and Goseong, where many foreign nationals work at shipyards and aqua farms.

According to the Coast Guard, five of the seven foreign nationals detained for selling and distributing drugs were immigrants lacking permanent legal status.

The other two were women who previously held Korean citizenship after getting married to Korean nationals. The Coast Guard alleges they were involved in drug dealing after getting divorced.

The eight suspected drug users also included four migrants living in Korea without legal permission, which hindered the authorities' search as they could not easily identify the suspects.

“We need to at least know their names and dates of birth to check their identities through the immigration office, but it is hard to identify them as they mostly use burner phones,” a Coast Guard official said.

“Two people fled to Daegu and Pohang while we were tracing them in early April, but we were able to find them since they kept wearing the same outfit,” the official said, adding it would have been difficult to identify them otherwise.

“Measures need to be drawn up for drug crimes involving illegal foreign residents.”

The Coast Guard also apprehended four other people, including two foreign sailors, for taking drugs at a bar frequented by foreign nationals in Goseong in December last year.

The number of drug-related crimes nationwide has risen tenfold over the past five years, from 90 in 2018 to 962 in 2022, according to the Coast Guard.

Since October last year, Tongyeong Coast Guard busted a total of 31 people involved in drug offenses, arresting 17.

“Tongyeong, Geoje and Goseong are areas that are populated with foreign workers at shipyards, aqua farms and fishing boats, and we believe that there will be more similar drug-distributing organizations," a Coast Guard official said, adding that the authorities will expand their investigation along the southern coast.

BY AN DAE-HUN, CHO JUNG-WOO [cho.jungwoo1@joongang.co.kr]