According to a news item in today’s Korea Times, Lee Tae Yong, the President of Daewoo International, was indicted by South Korea for illegal exports of military items to Myanmar (Burma). The indictment of the Daewoo chief was one of a group of multiple indictments which included indictments of seven companies and fourteen officials from those companies.

The indictment alleged the export of production facilities and weapons technology to Myanmar in violation of the law on exports of strategic goods. According to the prosecutor for the case, the companies had “made contracts with Myanmar to export plant facilities, machines and technology information which can be used to make various cannon weapons.” Apparently before the companies and officials were collared by Korean authorities, 90 percent of the weapons-making facilities had been completed and 90 percent of contract funds had been dispensed to the Korean companies.

South Korea is part of the Wassenaar Arrangement pursuant to which it is committed to restrict exports of military and dual-use items.

The South Korean authorities could have obtained their first hints of the illegal exports of Daewoo through a simple Internet search. On February 6, 2002, Mr. Lee visited the Myanmar Ministry of Defense. His visit was captured by Myanmar Television, and a picture (shown above) and a report of that visit were printed in The New Light of Myanmar, the official newspaper of the Myanmar government. That New Light news story and photograph were then made available on the government’s website. Next time Mr. Lee attempts to become an international arms dealer for sanctioned regimes, he might want to make his official visits to his customers a little more surreptitiously.

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