American Man Extradited to South Korea Over Graffiti Sprayed on Trains

A young American man who’s suspected of spray painting graffiti on South Korean subway trains has been extradited to the Asian country to face questioning. 

The 27-year-old, who hasn’t been named by South Korean police, allegedly broke into nine subway train garages across the country in September. Together with his Italian accomplice, the pair was said to have spray painted the outer walls of trains with words such as “WORD” and “DENY.” 

Authorities identified him with CCTV footage after a subway service operator in Incheon city—where one of the nine garages that were graffitied is located—filed a complaint with the police, local reports said. They found he left for Vietnam and subsequently requested an Interpol red notice for his arrest. He was arrested in Romania and brought back to South Korea on Wednesday, though his alleged Italian accomplice is yet to be found. 

According to South Korean law, spraying graffiti on public facilities is punishable with up to three years in prison or a maximum fine of seven million won (about $5,674). It’s unclear at this stage if the American’s case will go to trial. 

The case is not the first example of a graffiti artist being extradited for their art-cum-vandalism. In 1982, Swiss artist Harald Naegeli, the “Sprayer of Zurich,” was sent back to his homeland from Denmark to face six months in jail. 

In 2010, Singapore asked the UK to extradite a man named Lloyd Dane Alexander for allegedly spray painting trains in the city-state, a request that was never fulfilled. His partner, a Swiss man named Oliver Fricker, was given a jail term and caned. In Singapore, where graffiti carries the same maximum prison sentence of three years, people can also be fined up to 2,000 Singaporean dollars, and be given three to eight strokes of the cane—a common form of corporal punishment, carried out with a 120-centimeter long stick. 

In South Korea, authorities began taking notice of graffiti when Park Jung-soo, a university lecturer, spray painted a rat on a G-20 summit poster in 2011. Rats were seen as an insulting depiction of the then president Lee Myung-bak. Park was fined two million won (about $1,620).

In June 2015, South Korean police said they’d ramp up crackdowns on graffiti, emphasizing people could be criminally charged with property damage or trespassing. Earlier that year in February, four Australian men were found spraying graffiti in the Seoul subway, but escaped any charges. 

In 2017, two British men were sentenced to four months in prison for painting Seoul subway trains. They were found to be members of a Manchester-based graffiti gang called SMT, which has previously been charged with similar offenses in the UK.

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