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Hanwha Group chairman Kim Seung-youn is surrounded by reporters after he arrived for questioning at Namdaemun Police Station in Seoul on Sunday./AP
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Police on Sunday questioned Hanwha Group chairman Kim Seung-youn on suspicion that he ordered a revenge attack on a group of bar workers who had quarreled with his son. Kim appeared at Seoul Namdaemun Police Station at 4 p.m. Sunday and was questioned until early Monday morning.
On the afternoon of March 8, Kim senior, accompanied by his bodyguards, allegedly kidnapped four bar workers and took them to a warehouse in Mt. Cheonggye in southern Seoul, where they beat them. Kim and his bodyguards then allegedly went to the bar in Bukchang-dong, Seoul where the group worked, and hit another staffer of the bar in the face.
In the early hours of the same day, Kim's second son Dong-won (25), a student of East Asian studies at Yale University, had been drinking in a karaoke bar in Cheongdam-dong, where he got into an altercation with employees from the Bukchang-dong bar. In the ensuing fight, he suffered a cut near his eye that required 13 stitches.
Kim senior denied all major charges, investigators said. Police grilled Kim about whether he himself took part in the revenge attack and whether weapons and tasers were used. Namdaemun Police chief Chang Hee-gon said victims identified Kim through the window of the interview room as having been among their attackers. Police is to file for an arrest warrant for the Hanwha chairman as early as on Monday.
Kim Dong-won left on a field trip to China last Wednesday with Seoul National University's Department of Asian History. Police will to summon him for questioning when he returns Monday. Since early this semester, Kim junior has been on an exchange program at SNU. A member of his group in China said Kim junior has made no comment on the allegations but has been getting frequent phone calls. He is scheduled to arrive at Incheon International Airport by China Southern Airlines at 6:00 p.m. Monday.
The victims told police they went to the karaoke bar in Cheongdam-dong on March 8 to apologize for having beaten Kim junior. But they said they were manhandled into a car by Kim's men and taken to a darkened room, where Kim senior, wearing black gloves, hit them in the eyes. ¡°Since my son was hit in the eyes, you deserve to be hit in the eyes too,¡± they quoted the elder Kim as saying. Kim's bodyguards allegedly used tasers and steel pipes to intimidate the group, and threatened them with worse. If the Hanwha chief is convicted of ordering the attack, he could face a jail term of more than three years for unlawful detention, lawyers said.
The Hanwha Group is Korea¡¯s 10th largest conglomerate with assets of W18 trillion (US$1=W929) as of April. It has 34 subsidiaries at home and 32 abroad and recorded sales of W22 trillion last year, including W2 trillion earned overseas.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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