Police Raid Hanwha Chairman’s Home
By Kim Rahn
Staff Reporter
Police confiscated documents from the home of Hanwha Group Chairman Kim Seung-youn in central Seoul in a raid Tuesday that attempted to secure evidence for an arrest warrant for his alleged mobilization of gangsters to kidnap and assault six bartenders involved in a brawl with his son.
The police raided Kim's home following a local court's issuance of a search warrant.
Investigators searched for a ``gold-coated gun'' allegedly used in the incident or clothes Kim and his son wore that day. They also examined Kim's car and global positioning system (GPS) navigation device.
The police Monday announced it has decided to seek an arrest warrant for the 55-year-old chairman, despite Kim and his son strongly denying all allegations during questioning. The victims have testified the chairman and his bodyguards beat them.
On March 8, the 22-year-old son, Dong-won, had a brawl at a karaoke in Cheongdam-dong in southern Seoul with six people working at a bar in Bukchang-dong in downtown Seoul, suffering a cut to his forehead that needed 13 stitches.
The next day, Kim allegedly took his bodyguards to kidnap the bar workers and take them to a warehouse on Mt. Cheonggye where they were allegedly attacked with steel pipes and other equipment. Kim later headed to the Bukchang-dong bar to find the man suspected of hitting his son, and assaulted other bar workers.
The victims claim Kim hit them himself using a steel pipe. But Kim denied the allegations.
The son, a Yale University student who is studying at Seoul National University as an exchange student, was questioned at Namdaemun police station in central Seoul late Monday after returning from a field trip to Beijing. He claimed he was the victim and denied him and his father committed violence.
The senior Kim also said he did not know about the Mt. Cheonggye allegation and he just visited the Bukchang-dong bar to arrange a reconciliation between his son and the workers.
The police are tracing cell phone records to obtain location-base information about Kim's bodyguards and aides to verify their whereabouts at the time of the incident. They are also looking at close-circuit television (CCTV) footage of the karaoke session, the bar and the mountain, but are having difficulty as the CCTVs were poorly managed and not functioning well.
The police are also trying to find out the whereabouts of the junior Kim's friend who is believed to have witnessed the violence at the three separate places.