7 booked for smuggling out drug substance
By Kim Bo-eun
Police said Thursday that that they had booked seven people without detention for smuggling large quantities of cold medicine containing substances that could be used to make methamphetamine, known locally as philopon, overseas.
A 50-year-old woman surnamed Lim and six others are suspected of shipping the medicines disguised as cheonggukjang, fermented soybean paste, to Mexico, investigators said.
Police confiscated 93,000 cold medicine doses and 120 kilograms of the powdered product. They have asked the Mexican authorities for assistance in tracking down a 50-year-old Korean-Mexican identified as Kim.
They said that Lim, a former assistant nurse, contacted Kim through a website and had started selling him medicinal herbs. Lim made 1.3 billion won by selling 1,950 cold medicine doses to Kim since May 2009.
Investigators found that she bought the medicine from three unlicensed wholesalers, including a 60-year-old Lee, and handed it over to 58-year-old Oh who was running a mill in Jegi-dong, eastern Seoul.
They obtained information about the transaction taking place between Lim and Oh and confirmed it at Oh’s mill, an officer at Seoul’s Dongdaemun Police Station told The Korea Times.
“We’ve only booked those involved since we are still in the process of investigating what has been going on in Mexico,” he said.
Oh was paid 200,000 won per 100 kilograms for grinding cold pills into powder which he then mixed into a paste with soy sauce. Oh put the paste in a plastic container and covered the top with a layer of real cheonggukjang.
The paste was delivered to Kim in Mexico by a 58-year-old courier named Choi.
Police said the products easily passed through customs as they had been disguised as cheonggukjang which has a strong odor.
Lim was quoted as saying to police that Kim had advised her about the smuggling process.
Based on Lim’s statements, police are suspecting the cold pills were used as an ingredient of philopon.
According to police, extracting the pseudoephedrine-hydrochloride from the cold medicine and mixing it with reactants produced up to 60 million doses of philopon worth 4.8 trillion won.
“More people are using couriers carrying parcels to smuggle out illegal substances after express mail service inspections were toughened,” said a police officer. “We need to step up inspections on products containing substances that can be used to make drugs.”