To, Dated: 1st August 2002 The Ambassador, Indian Embassy in Korea, Hannam Dong, Seoul, South Korea. From, Members of Indian association of Korea, Seoul, South Korea. Dear Sir, The above association consists of Indian professionals residing in South Korea. The intention of this letter is to draw your kind attention to a disturbing incident that is mentioned below and to gather more information about that incident seeking appropriate remedy. The situation that had happened at Incheon international airport seems to be grim and regretful. As a matter of fact, a group of Indian travelers came to Seoul to watch the football match (USA vs. Germany) scheduled at Ulsan city on June 20,2002. It appears that they were representing an industry in India and had all valid documents viz. Korean visa, passport and FIFA tickets to view the match. However, the most disturbing and shameful act committed by airport authority was that these football enthusiasts were not allowed to enter the Seoul city with out any apparent reason and were deported despite of having valid documents. More over, it is known from the postings of international news agencies (Times of India, Rediff and PTI) that they were ill treated by the immigration personnel of South Korea, detained and denied any communication to home country or embassy (please refer to the attached printed copy of the details report as appeared in the Times Of India dated 3rd July, 2002). You may refer to the following newspaper links for more information. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Articleshow.aspart_id=14386595 http://www.rediff.com/sports/football/2002/jun/28denied.htm This incident is quite disturbing to the Indian citizens residing in Korea to hear that people from our country were ill-treated. Hence we would like to know actual circumstances for such act. If the situation was created with out any valid reason, then the culprits should be litigated appropriately. As expected in normal, it is the moral responsibility of any host country to inform the concerned embassy about deportation of its citizen due to any reason. Those deported Indians might have \"n\" number of mistakes in their documents and humiliating fact was that they were assaulted according to news report, however intimation of the exact situation to corresponding diplomatic mission seemed to be obligatory in any case. Hence, the obvious responsibility of Korean immigration officials was to inform the Indian embassy before commencing any legal action against any Indian national. If that responsible diplomatic action is being deliberately overlooked by Korean immigration officials in association with harassment of Indian nationals, then it is needless to mention that Korean immigration officials simply underestimate the validity of basic regards deserved by Indians on their soil and does not recognize existence of Indian embassy as diplomatic mission on behalf of India. We hope this point is very clear, by now, to the view of Indian embassy in Seoul. On the other hand, it becomes a moral obligation of Indian embassy, after having information about such traumatic incident, to seek clarification from Korean officials regarding the issue because it concerns Indian nationals. If it happens that the Korean embassy does not bother to reply to Indian embassy irrespective of its repetitive request then, it simply indicates either the Indian embassy does not hold a firm mission in South Korea or embassy has not put the things in proper words to respective Korean authority. It would be worth to mention that from general perspective, we regard Indian embassy as a

Sponsor

Links