Two South Koreans were among 18 people sentenced to death on drug smuggling and trafficking charges in Vietnam.

According to the local media VnExpress on Monday, a family and juvenile court in Ho Chi Minh City handed down the death sentence the previous day to two South Koreans, a Chinese man and 15 Vietnamese people.

The group was reportedly indicted for distributing 216 kilograms of drugs.

One of the South Koreans had been imprisoned in South Korea six times for violating immigration laws over a period of 16 years since 2000.

After settling in Vietnam in 2019, the individual established a business that exported granite to South Korea before meeting the Chinese man in 2020 and beginning to distribute drugs along with a compatriot whom he had met in prison in South Korea.

The severe sentence correlates to the drug laws in Vietnam, which are some of the most strictest in the world, exposing anyone caught with more than 600 grams of heroin or more than two-point-five kilograms of methamphetamine to the death penalty.