PUSAN POLICE BREAK UP INT'L DRUG SMUGGLING RING

An international drug smuggling ring that supplied various narcotics
in Pusan was broken up yesterday, said the Pusan Metropolitan Police
Agency.

The police announced that they arrested eight Russian drug
traffickers, including a 46-year-old former member of the Russian
mafia, on the charge of distributing drugs to foreigners and citizens
for the past three and a half years, using the shopping area of
Choryang-dong in the southern port city.

The police also began a search for two Iranian dope peddlers, who
brought in heroin, hashish and marijuana from the Middle East and
provided them to the Russian gang.

According to police officers, the drug smuggling group, which called
itself ``Baso and his Family,'' is also suspected of involvement in
several instances of human smuggling, including one in July that
transported illegal foreign residents of Korea from Pusan to Hokkaido
in Japan.

Pusan's police agency is inquiring into further crimes after
obtaining a secret tip that the organized crime ring meddled in the
operation of shops in the shopping area frequented by foreigners, and
investigating whether or not the gang is linked to domestic organized
crime rings.