Suspected secret Chinese police base has another branch near Seoul's National Assembly

A Chinese restaurant in southern Seoul suspected of being operated as a base for a secret Chinese police station in Korea was found to have opened another branch office right in front of the National Assembly building in Yeouido, western Seoul.

A Chinese restaurant in southern Seoul, which was suspected of being used as a base for a secret Chinese police station in Korea, in December 2020 opened another branch in a building located in front of the National Assembly building in Yeouido, western Seoul. [CHUNG YEONG-GYO]

A Chinese restaurant in southern Seoul suspected of being operated as a base for a secret Chinese police station in Korea was found to have opened another branch office right in front of the National Assembly building in Yeouido, western Seoul.

The company opened the office in a nine-story building located on a road directly in front of the National Assembly building in December 2020, according to a certificate of registry information on the restaurant’s operator obtained by the JoongAng Ilbo.

A total of seven businesses were in operation in the building, the JoongAng Ilbo confirmed Friday.

Two Chinese media-related companies were located in the building: a Chinese media-related office and the Seoul bureau office of China Central Television (CCTV) were on the ninth floor.

The operator of the Chinese restaurant had explicitly detailed its major businesses as the operation of the restaurant, food and beverage services and cultural art events when the office first opened.

The company further expanded its business to include the operation of a Chinese culture experience facility in November 2018, and to wholesale and retail sales of drinks and cigarettes in September 2020.

Names of many executives of the company who are either presumed to be Chinese, naturalized citizens or Korean-Chinese were found on the list of the obtained document.

According to the Chinese restaurant's website, the restaurant is scheduled to go on a monthlong break for interior renovation from Jan. 1.

Regarding the alleged secret police station, the Korean government is taking great caution.

“At this point, we do not have anything significant to share,” a Foreign Ministry official told the press in Seoul last week, explaining "actual facts should be cleared out first."

The Foreign Ministry, however, said related counter-intelligence acts are being carried out by institutions including the National Intelligence Service.

China has denied the presence of the so-called secret police.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said, “the so-called overseas police stations do not exist,” during a press conference last Thursday.

The comment also came after the nongovernmental human rights organization Safeguard Defenders announced earlier this month that China’s local-level public security bureau based in Nantong, Jiangsu Province, was running at least one police station in Korea, though it couldn’t confirm its exact location.

These overseas police service stations, according to Safeguard Defenders, are a form of long-arm policing by the Chinese government, to monitor its nationals. They are said to be located in at least 53 countries across five continents.

“The matter could critically affect the relationship between the two countries, so it is difficult to confirm any facts related to it,” a spokesperson from the Korean government told the JoongAng Ilbo on Sunday.

The Chinese embassy also denied the presence of the secret police, stressing that a high-level collaboration is maintained between the two countries through a “communication channel that exists between the Chinese and the Korean police and the prosecution."

BY CHUNG YEONG-GYO [cho.jungwoo1@joongang.co.kr]