A Chinese restaurant operating for eight years in Seongnam, a satellite city just south of Seoul, South Korea, has been the target of a deliberate attack that has drawn cross-border law enforcement attention. According to local police announcements on Tuesday, the Xi Jinping-named eatery was stormed by four masked attackers in the early hours of September 24. The perpetrators smashed the restaurant’s interior furniture and sprayed lacquer across the premises, causing extensive property damage, before fleeing the country immediately after the incident.
Surveillance camera footage retrieved from the restaurant’s security system clearly captured the entire process of the attack, which police have used to identify key characteristics of the suspects. Authorities confirmed the four suspects are Chinese citizens aged between 20 and 40, and after carrying out the vandalism, they returned to China, with investigators tracing their routes to Shanghai and Yantai, a coastal city in Shandong Province. South Korean police announced this Tuesday that they are preparing to submit an application to Interpol for red notices for the four suspects. It should be noted that red notices are not formal international arrest warrants, but global requests to law enforcement agencies in all member states to locate and temporarily detain the individuals involved, pending extradition procedures.
The restaurant owner, in an interview with local Korean media outlet The Chosun Daily, clarified that he chose the name Xi Jinping for the establishment purely out of a desire to build it into the top-rated Chinese restaurant in South Korea, with absolutely no political motivation behind the naming. The eatery, which mainly offers a variety of authentic Chinese cuisines while also adding a small selection of popular Korean dishes to its menu, has maintained a good reputation among local diners, holding an average 4 out of 5 star rating on Google reviews.
However, over the past 12 months, the owner has been facing constant pressure to change the restaurant’s name. The first wave of intense demands came in August last year, when it was announced that Chinese President Xi Jinping would attend the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) summit hosted in South Korea. During that period, the owner received dozens of phone calls demanding a name change, and even received offers of large sums of money from individuals claiming to run businesses in China, who insisted on purchasing the right to rename the restaurant and repeatedly pressed for an agreement.
In April of this year, an anonymous individual filed an official complaint with South Korea’s Ministry of Intellectual Property over a signature menu item named “Xi Jinping Special Rice”. After a formal review, the ministry found no violation of relevant regulations and closed the case without any penalties or mandatory changes. This latest vandalism attack, however, is the most severe incident of harassment the restaurant has encountered over the past year. The owner estimated that the total property damage from the attack amounts to approximately 15 million South Korean won, equivalent to around 11,100 U.S. dollars or 8,400 British pounds.
Following the attack, the restaurant closed for five days to repair damage and clean the premises, and officially resumed business this Tuesday. After the attack, the owner stated that his operation team is now seriously considering changing the restaurant’s name to avoid further similar harassment and safety threats.