Prosecutors Sunday indicted three people for bringing in methamphetamine from North Korea and attempting to assassinate a high-profile North Korean defector.
The 69-year-old, identified only by his family name Bang, and two others have been detained for producing 70 kilograms of methamphetamine at a North Korean factory in Sariwon, North Hwanghae Province, in June and July of 2000, a prosecutor at the Seoul Central Prosecutors’ Office said.
They were suspected of being contacted through another South Korean, identified by his surname Lee who died in 2004, in 1996 by a North Korean agent in China who proposed Bang and the two colleagues bring the raw materials and equipment to North Korea to produce meth.
They allegedly traveled to North Korea several times with the aid of North Korean agents and made 70 kilograms of meth there.
“It is the first time North Korean agents were found to have been involved in the production of methamphetamine, although there have been rumors North Korea tried to get foreign currency by selling meth,” the prosecutor said, asking for anonymity.
Bang and his colleagues were given 35 kilograms of meth by the North, prosecutors said, but added they have not yet found evidence the meth was distributed in South Korea.
One of Bang’s colleagues, Kim, 63, had been allegedly collaborating with North Korean agents to assassinate Hwang Jang-yop, a secretary of North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party who defected to South Korea in 1997.
Hwang died of heart failure in 2010 when Kim was preparing for the assassination, prosecutors said. (Yonhap)
