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Yakuza, Korean cohort given life, huge fines for smuggling massive speed haul

Wednesday, 14 May 2008

A yakuza gang boss and his South Korean cohort were Wednesday given life sentences, fined and ordered by the Tokyo District Court to pay an additional penalty of nearly 1 billion yen for smuggling a massive cache of speed into Japan from North Korea.

Katsuhiko Miyata, 60, the boss of a gang affiliated with the Kyokuto-kai yakuza syndicate, and Tokimitsu Woo, 61, unemployed, were found guilty on a variety of charges including breaking the Stimulants Control Law.

Presiding Judge Masaki Tsunoda ordered the pair to each serve life imprisonment, fined them 10 million yen apiece and ordered them to pay an additional penalty of 961.75 million yen.

"This was a highly organized operation planned and carried out on a massive, international scale and is worthy of strong criticism," Tsunoda said.

Court records showed that on two occasions in 2002 the pair collected about 230 kilograms of stimulants a North Korean cargo ship dropped off into the Sea of Japan and smuggled the drugs into the country through a coastal drop-off point in Shimane Prefecture.

During the trial, prosecutors pointed out that a North Korean ship that sank itself off the coast of Kagoshima Prefecture after a gunfight with the Japanese Coast Guard in December 2001 had been carrying drugs to Japan to be collected by Miyata's yakuza syndicate.

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