Chinese Men Arrested While Attacking Falun Gong Information Site in South Korea

On June 2, 2026, on Jeju Island, South Korea, three Chinese men attacked a Falun Gong information site outside the Shilla Duty Free Store in Yeon-dong district. They destroyed informational display boards, injured at least two practitioners, and threatened others. Korean police arrested all three at the scene.

The attack is the most recent in a documented series of assaults on Falun Gong information sites on Jeju Island. It bears the hallmarks of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) transnational repression: violence on foreign soil against peaceful citizens exposing the CCP’s human rights abuses, carried out with open contempt for local law.

“What happened on Jeju Island is the latest example of the CCP’s transnational repression targeting Falun Gong practitioners and their peaceful activities around the world. In targeting Falun Gong, these attackers allegedly violated Korea’s laws,” said Levi Browde, executive director of the Falun Dafa Information Center. “The Korean police did the right thing by arresting them on the spot. What concerns us is what happens next. Some past cases indicated that the attackers simply flew home before facing any consequences, and that is the outcome Beijing is counting on. We urge Korean authorities to see this case through.”

Obstruction, assault and banner destruction

Eight practitioners were conducting the assembly that day — four men and four women, ranging in age from their late 40s to their 70s — according to Park Dong-seok, coordinator of the Jeju chapter of the Korea Falun Dafa Buddhist Association. The group had filed a lawful assembly notice and was displaying banners and boards near the duty-free store, a location frequented by Chinese tourists, to inform visitors about the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong.

The attack began at around 6 p.m. Three Chinese men approached the site and began shouting, “Stop doing this!” and “Take it down!” according to Mr. Park, who relayed the account of practitioners who were present. Police later identified the three as two men in their 30s and one in his 40s. The practitioners tried to dissuade them, explaining that the assembly was lawful, but the men kept shouting, “If you don’t take it down, we will smash it.”

One of the men, dressed in black, snatched a picket sign from an elderly female practitioner and slammed it to the ground. The force of the pull knocked her down. He then kicked a standing board that displayed information about the persecution. Male practitioners stepped in to stop him, but he kept kicking the board.

A female practitioner pointed to a notice the group had posted in Chinese, citing Korean law: a lawful assembly may not be obstructed, and anyone who does so faces up to three years’ imprisonment or a fine of up to 3 million won. The practitioners had posted the notice after earlier incidents in which Chinese tourists challenged their right to assemble.

The violence then escalated. One of the men struck the left side of a 63-year-old practitioner’s face. He also twisted the hand of a 70-year-old practitioner who tried to intervene, hyperextending the arm and leaving him unable to use his hand properly for about a day.

The two injured practitioners later gave statements to police and submitted medical certificates. According to the copies of those certificates the Falun Dafa Information Center received from the victims, the 63-year-old practitioner had pain in his left upper jaw where he was punched, along with neck pain and an abrasion on his right knee. The 70-year-old practitioner sustained lower-back pain and injuries to the second, third, and fourth fingers of his left hand; doctors applied a splint, noting tenderness and swelling at the middle finger.

Chinese perpetrators arrested on site

Korean police arrested the three men at the scene as flagrant offenders. They face allegations of obstructing an assembly, assault resulting in injury, and property destruction. The men, presumed to be tourists, were held at the Jeju Seobu (Western) Police Station while under investigation.

As the assembly’s organizer, Mr. Park filed a petition with the Jeju Seobu Police Station on June 3, urging a swift and thorough investigation, strict punishment, and — if the suspects posed a flight risk — an exit ban. The petition argued that the attack was not a chance altercation but a collective, organized crime: the men acted in concert, threatened participants, and were seen trying to summon additional people. It also warned that foreign perpetrators in past Jeju and Seoul cases had left the country before they could be identified or punished, making it impossible for victims to recover damages.

On June 5, Mr. Park said he had confirmed with police that they intend to forward the case to prosecutors.

A recurring pattern

The June 2 assault did not occur in isolation. Falun Gong practitioners and rights groups have documented a sustained pattern of violence and intimidation against the community on Jeju Island and around the world.

Between October and November 2023, seven separate attacks on Falun Gong information booths took place on the island, according to Minghui. In the final incident, a Chinese man kicked over poster boards, destroyed posters, and attempted to set them on fire. He was arrested and indicted. The South Korean Falun Dafa Association said at the time that the attacks were not coincidental but organized by the CCP, noting that the perpetrators selectively destroyed boards on specific topics, including forced organ harvesting.

The Center has documented physical assaults on practitioners at information sites in London, New York, and other cities, alongside harassment, surveillance, and pressure campaigns directed by the CCP against practitioners living abroad.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice rooted in the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. The CCP launched a campaign to eradicate the practice in 1999. Practitioners in China have since been subjected to mass detention, torture, and forced organ harvesting. The Falun Gong practitioners on Jeju Island maintain their information site so that Chinese visitors can learn facts that are censored inside China.

Call to action

The Falun Dafa Information Center calls on:

• South Korean authorities to conduct a swift and thorough investigation, impose an exit ban on the three suspects pending the outcome, and prosecute the case to the full extent of the law. Allowing perpetrators to leave the country unpunished invites further violence.

• The South Korean government to investigate whether the repeated attacks on Falun Gong sites are coordinated, and to safeguard the constitutional rights of assembly and expression for all people on Korean soil.

• Governments and international bodies to recognize attacks of this kind as transnational repression and to hold the CCP accountable for exporting its persecution abroad.

• Members of the public and the media to report on the incident and stand with the peaceful practitioners who were attacked for telling the truth.