The Bureau of Foreign Trade (BOFT) on Tuesday said it would not impose any further penalties on a Taiwanese telecom equipment company that has been put on a sanctions list by South Korea for exporting banned products to North Korea.
Royal Team Corp (華悅), along with 29 other corporations, were sanctioned by Seoul on Tuesday.
The bureau said the company was punished in 2008 for exporting strategic high-tech products to North Korea without permits, but since 2013, it has not applied for any strategic high-tech commodity (SHTC) export permits.
It said it was trying to determine why Royal Team Corp was sanctioned by Seoul, including whether it was due to the firm’s previous violation.
“If it is indeed related to the old case, we will not impose any new penalties on Royal Team,” said a bureau official who declined to be named.
The Taipei District Court in 2008 sentenced Royal Team’s top manager to 115 days in prison, commutable to a fine, and banned the firm from exporting anything for three months after it was found to have exported industrial computers, stealth coating, telecom equipment and other peripherals to North Korea without permits.
The government also placed the firm on its SHTC watchlist.
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