A court in the city of Guangzhou, in the south of China, “has legally pronounced a verdict and executed the accused South Korean (…) for drug trafficking”, said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a press release .
“When defendants of different nationalities commit crimes on Chinese territory, Chinese law should be applied equally,” he added.
A Seoul Foreign Ministry official told reporters on Friday that “the death penalty was applied today to a South Korean citizen who was sentenced to death for selling drugs in China.”
Beijing said the individual, whom Chinese authorities have named Jiang – which would be rendered Kang in Korean – had had his “legitimate rights and interests” protected.
South Korea expressed its “regret that the death penalty was applied against our citizen”.
“The government has made multiple requests for reconsideration or postponement of the execution on humanitarian grounds through various channels since the announcement of the death sentence,” the official said.
This is the first execution of a South Korean offender by China in nine years, South Korea Yonhap reports the news agency.
The individual was arrested in China in 2014 in possession of five kilograms of methamphetamine, according to Yonhap.
He was sentenced to death in 2019, the agency said.
China frequently applies the death penalty by lethal injection for very serious crimes.
Like many countries in the region, China has strict drug laws and several foreign nationals have been sentenced to death for 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 over 7.5 kilograms of methamphetamine in his luggage.
And in 2019, China sentenced two Canadian nationals accused of drug trafficking to death at a time when relations with Ottawa were collapsing.
Seoul said Friday’s execution was “unrelated to relations between China and South Korea.”
