Thai drug dealer ‘used plastic surgery to become handsome Korean man’

Saharat Sawangjaeng is said to have gone under the knife several times and changed his name to dodge investigators. Photo / Thailand National Police

Thai police have arrested a suspected drug dealer who reportedly changed his name and used plastic surgery in order to transform into a “handsome Korean man”.

Saharat Sawangjaeng, 25, who took on the Korean alias Seong Jimin, was found last week at an apartment in the Thai capital Bangkok and arrested on charges of importing and possessing MDMA, also known as ecstasy.

The police released mugshots to show how he had transformed his features beyond recognition and said that Saharat had been described by witnesses in the case as “a handsome Korean man”.

The case has been compared by local media to the 1997 Hollywood movie “Face/Off” starring Nicolas Cage and John Travolta, where the actors play an FBI officer and a criminal who swap faces in an experimental transplant.

The police were said to be shocked when they arrived to arrest Saharat as “none of his original face was left”. The suspect also told officers he had intended to restart his life in South Korea despite not speaking the language, reported the Bangkok Post.

He had been on the run for three months before the police managed to pinpoint his location by analysing where ecstasy was being distributed to other sellers and buyers, and one of his alleged drug runners slipped up and failed to conceal his movements.

Saharat confessed to ordering ecstasy on the dark web and using cryptocurrency to pay for it, according to the police. He had previously been arrested for assault and drugs charges.

Major general Theeradej Thammasutee, of the Thai police, described him as “one of the main causes of Bangkok’s MDMA epidemic”, according to a report by the Straits Times.

“He is a drug lord importing MDMA from Europe at just 25 years old. We believe there are more suspects in foreign countries. We will continue our investigation,” he said.