Park Wang-yeol, the Telegram drug lord whose sugarcane field murder case inspired the movie "The Roundup 2," has been extradited to South Korea. Three years ago, he mocked Korean justice, saying "they can't bring me back because there's no evidence for extradition." Now he has returned in handcuffs following a temporary extradition request by President Lee Jae-myung. Park had already been sentenced to 60 years for murder by a Philippine court, yet he attempted to escape and distributed approximately 30 billion won worth of drugs to South Korea every month via Telegram from inside prison.
It was in prison that Park, originally incarcerated on illegal gambling and murder charges, transformed into a drug lord. He reportedly learned distribution techniques from Kim Hyung-ryeol, another Southeast Asia-based drug kingpin he met behind bars, and built his own organization within a year of escaping. Operating under the alias "Jeonse-gye" (meaning "The Whole World"), Park ran a sub-organization called "Vatican Kingdom" and continued to expand his drug business from prison even after being recaptured. The Philippine prison system, with its lax management, effectively became his "crime school" and "drug franchise headquarters."
South Korea has already lost its status as a drug-free country. As of late last year, there were 45.3 drug offenders per 100,000 people — more than double the 20-per-100,000 threshold for drug-free status. The recidivism rate over the past five years reached 50.3 percent. With inmates learning drug distribution and manufacturing behind bars, people now quip that incarceration amounts to "job training" rather than punishment. Among teenage drug offenders, juvenile detention centers and prisons are sarcastically called "drug military academies."
At Incheon Detention Center, a group was caught and prosecuted for smuggling LSD, a synthetic drug, by spreading it thinly on the backs of postage stamps. Correctional facilities are repeatedly breached by crimes that defy imagination. The so-called "blue badge rooms," where drug offenders are housed together, end up expanding drug networks and drawing even general inmates into crime. Prison walls are not containing crime — they are nurturing it.
Drug crime cannot be eradicated through enforcement alone. Treatment and prevention must go hand in hand. The Ministry of Justice's Correctional Services headquarters is reportedly reviewing a plan to separate and elevate its status into an independent Correctional Services Agency. Prisons must shed the stigma of being crime schools. There is also a need to consider converting the temporary inter-agency "Government Joint Drug Crime Investigation Headquarters" into a permanent dedicated body modeled after the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).