Man gets prison time for assaults on Chinese, Taiwanese tourists in Seoul
Published: 03 Sep. 2025, 13:20
Updated: 03 Sep. 2025, 17:36
![A man in his 30s grabs a soju bottle inside a restaurant before assaulting a Taiwanese tourist on April 6. [SCREEN CAPTURE]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2025/09/03/38359317-9d22-46c3-aeeb-44e75da1dfa7.jpg)
A man in his 30s grabs a soju bottle inside a restaurant before assaulting a Taiwanese tourist on April 6. [SCREEN CAPTURE]
A man in his 30s has been sentenced to prison for assaulting tourists from China and Taiwan in two separate incidents earlier this year.
The Seoul Western District Court on Aug. 21 sentenced the man to 10 months in prison on charges of assault and assault with a weapon, according to legal sources on Wednesday.
The first assault took place on April 1, when the man attacked two Chinese women in their 20s after accusing them of speaking too loudly in Chinese on a bus.
After getting off at the same stop, he followed them for about 70 meters (230 feet), hurled sexually explicit slurs about the victims' mothers in Chinese and kicked them in the lower back.
The second incident occurred on Apr. 6 inside a restaurant in Mapo District, western Seoul, where he assaulted two Taiwanese tourists — a man in his 30s and a woman in her 20s — whom he mistakenly believed to be Chinese.
He waited for the couple to exit the restaurant and then struck the male victim on the head with a soju bottle.
When a restaurant employee intervened and pushed the man to the ground, he bit the worker on the thigh and knee.
“The defendant appears to have committed hate crimes targeting Chinese nationals out of longstanding hostility,” the court said in its ruling. “The victims were attacked without provocation and have called for stern punishment, which is an aggravating factor.”
However, the court also noted that the defendant “deeply regrets his actions and turned himself in after the case was reported in the media,” which it considered in sentencing.
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
BY JANG GU-SEUL [[email protected]]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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