The state customs agency will set up "Korean Desks" to conduct joint investigations and crackdowns in ten countries with high rates of drug smuggling, particularly targeting South Korea.

The Korea Customs Service said Friday that it would establish desks in Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, the U.S., the Netherlands, Cambodia, Laos, Canada, Germany and France.

Drugs brought in from the ten countries accounted for 70 percent of those caught at the border last year and 83 percent of the confiscated weight.

The customs agency will deploy approximately ten officials to each country to clamp down on cargo and travelers departing for South Korea.

The agency detected a record high two-thousand-913 kilograms of drugs at the border between January and late October, a 384-percent jump from a year earlier.

A sharp increase in smuggling from Cambodia and Laos comes at a time when Korean authorities are tackling a rising number of online scams by crime rings in the region.