A Korean man identified as Kim was fined 500,000 rubles by a Russian court on charges of illegally importing radioactive material to Sakhalin Island. Kim, who runs a company in Korea, was fined by the Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk court for smuggling equipment containing depleted uranium he had picked up in Libya into the country in June 2004, prosecutors said. Importing equipment for use in the construction of a liquefied natural gas plant, Kim forged customs documents and told his employees not to declare that the load also contained depleted uranium.

Kim was arrested in Dec. 2004 for the incident and paid 3 million rubles to get out on bail. The court’s ruling is effective as of Monday.

(englishnews@chosun.com )