South Korea

The Seoul High Court (20th Criminal Division) dismissed Kazakhstan's extradition request on procedural grounds, without reaching the merits. Kazakhstan had submitted its extradition request to the Korean Ministry of Justice in October 2019, but the Minister did not issue a formal instruction to the prosecutor to file the application with the court until March 2025, and the prosecutor did not file until June 2025 — nearly six years after the original request.By the time the application was filed, the whereabouts of the fugitive (identified only as "A") were unknown. The court held that under the proviso to Article 13(1) of the Extradition Act, a prosecutor may not file an extradition review application where the fugitive's location is unknown. Multiple attempts to serve documents on the fugitive at his last known address failed (returned undelivered), and two rounds of location inquiries to the competent district prosecutors' office (Suwon District Prosecutors' Office, Ansan Branch) confirmed that the fugitive could not be found. The court reasoned that where a fugitive's whereabouts are unknown: service of the application is impossible; the review proceedings cannot meaningfully proceed; and even if the court granted the application, the fundamental purpose of extradition — securing the person and surrendering them to the requesting state — could not be achieved. The application was therefore dismissed as inadmissible. The court noted that the prosecutor may re-file once the fugitive's location is confirmed.

In extradition proceedings, the party retains an interest in appealing a decision of no need to proceed issued on account of the absence of supplementary documentation relevant to the determination, where the party had primarily sought a ruling on the merits of the conditions for extraditability on the basis of the extradition request. This is because a decision of a purely procedural nature is not capable of producing the preclusive effect, under Article 707 of the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure, that would otherwise bar a subsequent decision granting extradition following a new request submitted by the same State for the same facts

For the purposes of granting extradition, in order to satisfy the requirement of double criminality it is not necessary that the abstract structure of the offence under foreign law corresponds exactly to a provision under Italian law. It is sufficient that the same conduct constitutes a criminal offence in both legal systems, irrespective of any differences in legal classification or in the applicable penalties. In the present case, extradition was requested on the basis that the person concerned had displayed and used credit cards of which he was only apparently the holder, and had also affixed forged signatures on sales receipts. It is clear that such conduct, as described, amounts under Italian law to both the offence provided for by Article 55 of Legislative Decree No. 231 of 2007 and the offence of fraud.

The Seoul High Court rejected Japan's extradition request for a Chinese national who, in December 2011, set fire to the gate (shinmon) of Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, causing minor damage and a risk of fire spreading to nearby structures. The suspect had acted in protest against the Japanese government's position on the "comfort women" (wartime sexual slavery) issue and its officials' continued visits to Yasukuni Shrine, which he regarded as a symbol of militarism. His maternal grandmother had been a Korean comfort woman abducted to China, and his paternal grandfather had died fighting the Japanese as a resistance soldier. The arson caused no casualties, and the damage was quickly extinguished by shrine security.The court conducted an extensive analysis of the concept of "political offence" under international and comparative law, distinguishing between absolute political crimes (acts directed solely against the state's political order) and relative political crimes (ordinary offences committed for a political purpose). Applying a six-factor balancing test — motivation, purpose, nature of the target, organic connection between the act and the political goal, legal character of the act, and proportionality between harm caused and political objective — the court concluded that the arson was predominantly a relative political crime rather than an ordinary criminal act.Key findings included: (i) the motivation was political protest, not personal gain; (ii) the purpose was to pressure the Japanese government to change its policy on historical recognition; (iii) Yasukuni Shrine, though legally a private religious corporation, carries political symbolism equivalent to a state facility; (iv) the act was organically connected to the political purpose, which was substantially achieved through the media attention generated; (v) the damage was closer in character to vandalism than arson; and (vi) there were no casualties and the property damage was minor, so there was no disproportionality. The court also considered the broader political context — the Korea–Japan historical dispute over comfort women, UN resolutions calling on Japan to accept legal responsibility, and resolutions adopted by the US, Dutch, Canadian and European parliaments — and held that extraditing the suspect would amount to a denial of South Korea's own constitutional values and the universal values espoused by the international community.

The Seoul High Court rejected Vietnam's extradition request for a Vietnamese-American national accused of organizing and directing a series of terrorist bombing plots against targets in Vietnam between 1999 and 2001. The suspect was the alleged Prime Minister of a self-declared government-in-exile (established in California in 1995) aimed at overthrowing the Vietnamese communist regime and establishing a liberal democratic government. The charged conduct included directing operatives to transport explosives into Vietnam on multiple occasions, planning bombings near Ho Chi Minh statues and public buildings, and organizing an attack on the Vietnamese embassy in Thailand. All but one incident ended at the preparatory stage without casualties.The court held that the offences constituted "relative political crimes" — a combination of ordinary criminal conduct (preparation and conspiracy to use explosives) and political opposition to the requesting state's political order. Under Article 3(1)(a) of the Korea–Vietnam Extradition Treaty, extradition is prohibited where the requested offence is of a political character, and that determination is reserved to the requested state. The court further found that neither of the treaty's exceptions applied: (i) Vietnam was not a party to the International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings, so that treaty could not qualify as a "multilateral international agreement to which both states are parties"; and (ii) UN Security Council Resolution 1373 did not constitute a "multilateral international agreement" within the meaning of the treaty, as it lacked the procedural and substantive characteristics of a treaty (no ratification, no reservations mechanism, no UN Secretariat registration). The court also declined to apply Article 8(1)(3) of the domestic Extradition Act (exception for crimes threatening the lives of multiple persons), holding that the treaty prevails over the domestic statute.