Vietnam

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.