Chinese Ambassador to South Korea Xing Haiming speaks at an event marking the 30th anniversary of diplomatic ties between the countries on Dec. 14, 2022. Yonhap.

By Jack Lau

The Chinese Embassy in Seoul has denied a media report accusing Beijing of setting a honey trap for a former South Korean governor and presidential hopeful.

"I would like to emphasize that the report is fabricated, deliberately slanderous and contrary to etiquette," a spokesperson said Monday in a statement on Chinese social media platform WeChat.

The statement is the embassy's second rebuke against allegations raised by South Korean media outlets. It did not mention a newspaper by name.
But the Chosun Ilbo newspaper published an article on Friday citing an unnamed source saying the South Korean government was investigating a Chinese restaurant in Seoul's Gangnam area as a possible Chinese "secret police station."

Its story on Monday said when China's former envoy to South Korea, Qiu Guohong, and his wife were invited to stay overnight at a condominium in South Chungcheong Province by then-governor Ahn Hee-jung in 2017, they brought a woman along who texted Ahn and invited him for "a second round of tea," implying a sexual encounter.

Testifying at Ahn's trial in 2018, his former secretary claimed that she was in possession of the governor's smartphone at the time and saw the text message from the Chinese woman. And sensing a political risk, the secretary went on to say that she spent the night at a corridor connected to the rooftop of the condominium to stop her boss in case he tried to meet the Chinese woman. The Chosun Ilbo report said that the Chinese embassy's alleged plot was not made public, partly because media reports at the time were heavily focused on Ahn's sexual misconduct involving his secretary.

The Korea Times could not verify the claims made in the news reports.

Ahn was found guilty in 2019 of raping his secretary after he was acquitted in an earlier trial a year before, which set back a nascent #MeToo movement in South Korea.

"I noticed that certain Korean media outlets, after speculating about the so-called 'overseas police stations,' claimed that China is meddling with South Korea's internal affairs and infiltrating South Korea with honey pots and other means, and even named a former Chinese ambassador to Korea," the embassy said.

South Korea joined other countries Tuesday to launch a probe into alleged secretive police stations run by the Chinese government to pressure its nationals suspected of committing crimes at home to return to China and face charges.

Spain-based human rights group Safeguard Defenders released two reports separately in September and December, saying more than 100 secret Chinese police stations have been established worldwide, citing publicly available information from local Chinese government websites.

Safeguard Defenders is run by Swedish activist Peter Dahlin, who was detained in China in 2016 during a highly publicized campaign by Beijing against civil rights lawyers. His NGO, China Action, trained lawyers specializing in human and civil rights.

Jack Lau is a reporter with the South China Morning Post. He is currently based in Seoul, writing for both The Korea Times and the South China Morning Post under an exchange program.