Bahk Eun-ji has been with The Korea Times since 2012, building a career across multiple desks. She began at the Business Desk, where she conducted in-depth interviews with key figures in Korea's corporate world. Later, she moved to the Politics & City Desk, focusing on education policy and social affairs. She later served as team leader of the digital content team, leading curation efforts on the newspaper’s homepage and reshaping print stories for social media audiences to enhance digital reach. Now back on the Politics Desk, she covers the National Assembly and the Ministry of National Defense, with a renewed focus on political developments.
Chinese individual, company on top of delinquent taxpayer lists
By Bahk Eun-ji
A Chinese man has topped the list of the delinquent individual taxpayers of Seoul City this year, with the person's overdue local income tax amounting to 1.27 billion won, according to the city government, Wednesday.
Seoul Metropolitan Government made public the names and addresses of 13,854 people and companies that have repeatedly failed to pay the local income tax. It discloses the list of tax defaulters of 10 million won or more in arrears every year.
Of those, 865 ― consisting of 635 individuals and 230 companies ― were newly listed this year. A citizen of China, Wen Yuehua, topped the list of the new individual defaulters for owing 12.7 billion won in back taxes. He has been involved in a legal battle with the government not to pay the tax but recently lost during a Supreme Court trial, so his name was disclosed this time.
The Seoul City Hall building /Korea Times file
By Bahk Eun-ji
Among the companies owing back taxes, Power Pine Limited, an investment consulting company represented by Chinese national named Cheung Ah Shuen, failed to pay the largest amount of 1.57 billion won in local income taxes.
The delinquent taxpayers whose names had already been disclosed on the list are listed again if the amount of overdue tax they owe surpasses 10 million won.
Former authoritarian President Chun Doo-hwan was also on the list. Chun has not paid 974 million won in real estate related taxes.
The city government said that 241 defaulters had paid 4.9 billion won earlier, after the city government notified them that their names would be made public if they were to keep failing to pay the taxes they owed.