Cheong Wa Dae on the 25th said the government's swift extradition of a person surnamed Park, known as the so-called "international drug kingpin," from the Philippines to Korea "shows the government's strong will to make criminals pay the price, even if they are hiding overseas."
Kang Yu-jung, Cheong Wa Dae Spokesperson, said in a written briefing the same day, "The government will, the moment Park is escorted, uncover every criminal act in full, track down accomplices and criminal proceeds to the end, and sternly punish them." She also said, "We will respond to transnational crimes with a principle of zero tolerance and build a denser international cooperation network so that criminals have nowhere to hide on this planet."
The government's special task force (TF) for transnational crime, comprised of the Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, National Intelligence Service (NIS), the prosecution, and the Korean National Police Agency, received Park on a provisional transfer from the Philippines on the morning of the same day. Under the extradition treaty between Korea and the Philippines, Philippine courts may suspend their own trials or sentence execution procedures and provisionally transfer a fugitive to proceed with Korea's criminal procedures.
Park's extradition took place just over 20 days after President Lee Jae-myung directly requested a provisional transfer from Philippine President Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos Jr. during the Korea-Philippines summit on the 4th.
At a meeting with the Korean community at the time, the president said, "I hear Park even calls in his girlfriend while in prison, and we need to investigate and punish this person in the Republic of Korea." Kang, the Spokesperson, said that after more than nine years of diplomatic and judicial efforts by successive administrations, the Lee Jae-myung administration achieved the diplomatic outcome of Park's extradition.
According to Cheong Wa Dae and the TF, Park is a key figure in the "sugarcane field murders," in which three Koreans were killed in the Philippines in 2016. He was sentenced to 60 years in prison by the Philippine Supreme Court and, even while incarcerated at New Bilibid Prison in the Philippines, has carried out organized crime, including large-scale drug distribution in Korea.