Smuggling in 4.1 billion won worth of drugs by tearing open a baseball… 47 Thai people arrested

A group of Thais were arrested for smuggling the Thai drug ‘Yaba’, with a market value of 4.1 billion won, into the country. They brought it in by tricking them by tearing off the stitches from a baseball, putting drugs in a plastic wick, and then tilting the torn ball.

According to the police on the 18th, the Gyeongbuk Police Agency arrested and sent 16 people, including foreign worker Mr. A (35), on charges of violating the Narcotics Control Act, and sent 31 people without detention.

The group is suspected of smuggling 82,000 Yaba tablets from Thailand from August to November by secretly hiding the drug in baseballs and sending it to Korea via international mail for distribution. Of these, 67,000 tablets (worth 3.3 billion won) were confiscated and their domestic distribution blocked in advance.

‘Yaba’, which means ‘to gain strength like a horse’, is a red pill-shaped drug made by mixing methamphetamine, caffeine, and codeine into pill form. It is known to be popular among Thais because it is cheap and easy to administer.

It was revealed that these people were factory workers living in foreign-dense areas such as Gyeongbuk, Gyeonggi, Daegu, and Ulsan, and distributed Yaba to Thai people through intermediary sales agents in each region.

According to the police investigation, Thais who took drugs were mainly illegal immigrants who lived in groups in rural areas or industrial complexes and took drugs in groups. They also habitually took drugs right before going to work or while working, causing them to work in a hallucinatory state.

In the past, drugs were smuggled in through cosmetics, medicine, and food, but this time, police reported that they used a clever and elaborate method of tearing off each stitch from a baseball, dismantling it, and then hiding the drugs inside a plastic ball and repackaging it.

Kim Ki-beom, head of the criminal division at the Gyeongbuk Police Agency, said, “Five accomplices, including the person in charge of smuggling, who are in Thailand are on Interpol’s red notice,” and added, “We will quickly arrest them through an international cooperation investigation.”