Chinese security personnel beat and severely injured a South
Korean photojournalist covering President Moon Jae-In's visit to
Beijing on Thursday, media groups said.
The scuffle took
place hours before Moon met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in an
attempt to ease tensions over the United States' deployment of a missile
defence system in South Korea.
The incident occurred at a
Beijing convention centre during the opening ceremony of a trade
partnership event attended by Moon, who began his four-day state visit
on Wednesday.
South Korean photographers protested after security personnel stopped them from following Moon's delegation.
The
guards then grabbed one photographer by the neck and threw him to the
floor, and seized another's camera, according to the Korea Press
Photographers Association (KPPA).
When the guards tried
to block journalists from entering another event hall, even though they
showed identity cards, a photographer surnamed Lee objected.
More
than 15 Chinese guards surrounded Lee and “punched him repeatedly,
before even kicking him on the face after he was knocked to the floor,”
the KPPA said in a statement, calling the incident an “unimaginable
act”.
The encounter left him with a bloody nose, a severe injury to his right eye, nausea and dizziness.
Officials
from the South Korean presidential office and other reporters tried to
stop the incident “to no avail”, the association added.
South Korea's KBS News
aired footage showing men in suits dragging and grappling with an
unidentified journalist as bystanders shouted “stop, stop, stop” in
English and an expletive in Korean.
“Who would have
thought that state officials could beat up reporters from a partner
country like this at a national event attended by head of state, which
is neither a warzone nor a violent protest site,” the KPPA said. “Is
this Chinese-style etiquette to invite guests and beat them up in your
living room?”
'Completely unacceptable'
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang told a regular
press briefing that while the trade show had been organised by the South
Korean side, “if someone is hurt, of course we are concerned about
that.”
Both countries had made “meticulous preparations”
for Moon's China trip “with the same goal in mind, which is that we
want to make sure that this visit is very successful,” Lu said. “We hope
it's just a minor incident.”
The Foreign Correspondents
Club of China (FCCC) said it was “concerned” about the incident, which
follows several reports of journalists being subjected to violence while
reporting in the country this year.
“Violence against
journalists is completely unacceptable, and the FCCC calls on the
Chinese government to investigate and address the incident,” it said in a
statement.
The guards may have been hired by the event's South Korean organisers, the country's Yonhap news agency cited an official as saying, but were still accountable to the Chinese police.
South Korean officials have lodged a complaint and demanded a formal apology from China, Yonhap added.
“We
made an agreement with China's public security ahead of the event that
the press will have access to all ... movement of the president,” a
South Korean official was quoted as saying by the Joongang Ilbo newspaper.
“But China made an arbitrary decision to block our press, which led to this preposterous disaster,” the official said.
