Coast Guard Cheong Establishes Dedicated Drug Investigation Team... Drug Offense Crackdowns Increase 14-Fold in 5 Years

The Coast Guard seized 35 kg of cocaine, enough for 1 million simultaneous doses, from a foreign cargo ship that entered Busan New Port in January last year. [Provided by the Korea Coast Guard]

[Asia Economy Reporter Park Hyesook] The Korea Coast Guard announced on the 28th that it has established a special drug investigation task force (TF) to respond to the rapidly increasing maritime drug crimes.

The task force consists of 174 members led by the head of the Coast Guard Investigation Bureau, and is deployed at the headquarters, five regional Coast Guard offices, and 20 Coast Guard stations.

Among them, 4 members are assigned to the headquarters, and 16 members are distributed with 2 to 5 members each at the regional Coast Guard offices. At the subordinate Coast Guard stations, a total of 154 personnel, including 60 from the criminal division and 94 from the foreign affairs division, are dedicated to drug investigations.

The Coast Guard plans to conduct nationwide intensive crackdowns by strengthening intelligence gathering on drugs such as methamphetamine, cocaine, and marijuana that could be smuggled into the country via international passenger ships and foreign vessels traveling abroad.

From the beginning of this year until last month, the Coast Guard has cracked down on a total of 861 drug-related crimes (260 individuals), which is more than 14 times the 60 cases (38 individuals) recorded in 2017.

The number of cases cracked down by year also shows an increasing trend: 90 cases (81 individuals) in 2018, 173 cases (164 individuals) in 2019, 412 cases (322 individuals) in 2020, and 518 cases (293 individuals) in 2021.

A Coast Guard official stated, "Due to a shortage of drug investigation personnel, it was insufficient to tackle the increasing maritime drug crimes," adding, "With the establishment of the task force and the reinforcement of personnel, we plan to strongly crack down on large-scale drug smuggling and drug use among maritime workers."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.