(AP)China has executed a South Korean national for drug trafficking, Beijing's foreign ministry said, the first time such a sentence has been carried out on a citizen of that country in almost a decade. A court in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou "lawfully pronounced a verdict and executed the South Korean defendant... for drug trafficking" on Friday, the foreign ministry said in a statement. It is the first execution of a South Korean drug offender by China in nine years, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported. In 2020, an Australian was sentenced to death in China for drug trafficking. And in 2019, China sentenced two Canadian nationals accused of drug trafficking to death at a time when relations with Ottawa were nosediving.
