Hanwha boss alleged to have abducted
bar workers who beat up his son
May 02, 2007
THE noose is tightening around South Korea Hanwha Group's chairman
Kim Seung-youn.
The Joong Ang daily reported yesterday that police quoted victms
saying he used a lead pipe to strike down a man and was an active
participant in beating several young men following a brawl
involving his son on 8 Mar.
Police have questioned Mr Kim and some Korean newspapers reported
that they may be seeking an arrest warrant for the chairman of
South Korea's 10th-largest conglomerate.
The tycoon allegedly abducted some bar workers and had them beaten
up as vengeance for an attack on his son in a bar in the capital,
Seoul, in March.
Hanhwa officials said that the younger Mr Kim, a student at Yale
University, sustained eye injuries that needed 11 stitches.
The 22-year-old Kim Dong-won was in China on a field trip arrived
in Seoul yesterday. Police were to question him last night.
According to the police, the senior Kim kicked the victims in the
face and body many times and encouraged his son to do the
same.
Senior Superintendent Jang Hee-gon, chief of Namdaemun Police
Station revealed these details after announcing the results of an
interim investigation into this case that has dominated news
coverage in South Korea for several days.
According to the report an apparently enraged Kim swung his fists
at employees of the bar, accusing them of not preventing the attack
on his son. He then called his son to the bar and asked him to
identify the man who had hit him earlier. When he did, the elder
Kim allegedly told his son to hit the man to retaliate for the
beating he had been given earlier.
Police said five people were beaten by the elder Kim and one by the
younger Kim.
The victims saw the Hanwha chairman from the other side of the
investigating room window during questioning and identified him as
the same man who had beaten them.
'We will decide when to seek an arrest warrant' after completing
the interrogation of others involved, South Korean news agency
Yonhap quoted the police chief as saying in a press briefing.
The bar employees who were allegedly beaten up told police that the
55-year-old Mr Kim and his bodyguards took them to a remote
mountain area outside Seoul where they were attacked by him and his
son.
MANHANDLED
They claimed that they had gone to the karaoke bar, in which the
attack on Mr Kim's son had taken place, to apologise for beating
him.
But instead they were bundled into a car and manhandled by Mr Kim's
men.
'Since my son was hit in the eyes, you deserve to be hit in the
eyes too,' they quoted the older Mr Kim as saying.
Superintendent Jang said the bar workers also claimed that Mr Kim
wielded a steel pipe to threaten them.
Mr Kim, who was reportedly interrogated by police for almost 12
hours, has denied direct involvement in the alleged abduction and
beating.