North Korea announced today that it has severed diplomatic relations with Malaysia, claiming that the main reason for the break was Malaysia’s forced extradition of an innocent North Korean citizen to the United States, according to the latest news from the North Korean official media KCNA.
In a recent ruling, a Malaysian court extradited a North Korean citizen suspected of money laundering in Singapore to the United States. The DPRK Foreign Ministry noted that “Malaysian authorities treated our innocent citizen as a ‘criminal’ on the 17th and eventually forcibly extradited him to the United States. We announced the severance of diplomatic relations with Malaysia, which committed the extraordinarily hostile act.”
According to the South Korean official media Yonhap News Agency, the North Korean citizen extradited from Malaysia to the U.S. was a 56-year-old man named Moon Chol-min (문철명). The FBI said Moon was suspected of transporting wine, watches and other Luxury goods to North Korea and running a shell company to launder money in violation of economic sanctions against North Korea, so it requested the Malaysian government’s assistance in extraditing him. Although Moon denied these suspicions and filed an appeal, it was rejected earlier this month, and the Malaysian court agreed to the U.S. extradition request as early as December 2019.
The DPRK Foreign Ministry stressed that the citizen had been engaged in legitimate foreign trade activities in Singapore for many years and that the accusation that he was involved in ‘illegal money laundering’ was baseless and a complete conspiracy. The DPRK Foreign Ministry warned that the Malaysian authorities should be responsible for all the consequences and that the U.S., which was behind the incident, should also pay the corresponding price.
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