ABELLA
AMID President Rodrigo Duterte’s pronouncement on the presence of the Korean mafia in Cebu, the Mandaue City Police Office (MCPO) has backed up the report of the Police Regional Office (PRO-7) in negating such claims.
MCPO deputy director for administration Supt. Jonathan Abella said their office has no intelligence reports regarding any Korean mafia operating in the city, or anyone in the Korean community threatening the peace and order in the city.
“Our intelligence unit has not tracked down any Korean mafia since the President made such pronouncement,” Abella told reporters.
He emphasized that the office had also not recorded any crimes involving some Korean nationals save for some minor traffic mishaps.
“We’ve only recorded traffic incidents involving Korean nationals but not violent or heinous crimes,” he said.
He said Korean tourists only visit Mandaue City for its vibrant nightlife, mainly to check out restaurants and bars located in Barangay Subangdaku, the central business district of the city.
“Most of the Korean nationals here are transient. They are mostly living in Cebu City and Lapu-Lapu City,” he clarified.
He said they had incidents of some drunk Korean nationals causing ruckus in bars, but these persons were not members of any crime group.
PRO-7 director Chief Supt. Noli Taliño and MCPO director Senior Supt. Roberto Alanas had instructed the police force to monitor the activities of the Korean nationals as well as their entry and exit to the city.
The police attaché of the Consulate of South Korea in Cebu, Consul Lee Yong Sang, clarified in a press conference on Wednesday that there is no presence of Korean mafia in the province.
However, he said there had been fugitives, he described as “gangsters” who came to Cebu to evade law enforcers in South Korea. But most of them had been arrested and deported to South Korea.
Cho Bong Hwan, the president of the Cebu Korean Association, also assured Cebuanos that most of the Koreans living in Cebu are small businessmen who run restaurants, lodging houses and souvenir shops, among others.
There are approximately 25,000 South Koreans living in Cebu while about half a million Korean tourists visited the province in 2016.