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.