Investigation of Hanwha Group Chairman Continues

The police have recently launched an investigation to find out whether or not Kim Seung-yeon (55), chairman of the Hanwha Group, was involved in a retaliatory attack against bar employees who injured his son.

The police confirmed yesterday that bodyguards of the chairman texted their colleagues when they moved to a construction area in the Mount Cheonggye, Gyeonggi Province, from a bar in Cheongdam-dong, Seoul. However, Chairman Kim and his bodyguards have insisted that they never went to the mountain.

The police expect that if the insistence of the bodyguards turns out false, that would be key evidence to reveal their dishonesty. A representative of the police said that they have analyzed records of text messages and telephone conversation made by the chairman’s 17 bodyguards without problems, and added that they will summon the chairman when finishing the analysis.

If the police confirm that the bodyguards sent text messages, they can find out the location of the callers at that time.

The police also formed a task force to find the whereabouts of Mr. Lee, a friend of Mr. Kim’s son, who allegedly witnessed the revenge beatings. Lee is known to be a former classmate of the chairman’s son and is now hiding himself with his phone number changed after this incident was reported.

Although the police searched Chairman Kim’s office for five hours starting at 9 a.m. yesterday, they failed to obtain evidence about the incident. Yesterday’s search was made without announcement amid tight security, and followed the first search a day ago, which was criticized for being made publicly. During the second search, Hanwha Group and the police were said to have been hostile to each other.

“We found documents, but not many, and we had to spend a lot of time doing this because the company was not cooperative,” said the police.

The Bukchang-dong bar owner had claimed that the CCTV in the bar had not been working. However, later the police found out that he had a monitor to watch the CCTV in the Bukchang-dong bar in another bar, which he owns.

The police are trying to recover the CCTV recording of the incident, but the recovery may be difficult because the longest period a recording is saved is 15 days.

imsun@donga.com