Search for 43 Missing Chinese Tourists Continues

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Saturday, March 23, 2002

Search for 43 Missing Chinese Tourists Continues

Police in the Republic of Korea (ROK) are still looking for 43 Chinese reportedly missing on March 15, the day they entered the country, said a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Seoul.

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Police in the Republic of Korea (ROK) are still looking for 43 Chinese reportedly missing on March 15, the day they entered the country, said a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Seoul.

Twenty-three other Chinese citizens who arrived in the ROK's western coastal city of Inchon on the same day also went missing. But they were found and have since returned to China, said Li Ruifeng, a Chinese Embassy media official.

Li said his embassy is keeping close contact and co-operating with the local police in the hope that the 43 missing persons will be found.

"They are Chinese citizens, and of course we are concerned about their whereabouts," Li said.

All 66 Chinese were on a three-day package tour organized by China Youth Travel Service. Travel agency officials said the tourists, from North China's Tianjin Municipality and Hebei Province, Central China's Henan Province and East China's Shandong Province, disappeared after going through the immigration bureau at the airport in Inchon.

Neither Li nor the travel agency would confirm speculation that the missing tourists are ethnic Koreans from China who filed false paperwork for the trip.

The incident, by far the largest involving Chinese in the ROK, aroused concern that ROK-bound travel by Chinese citizens would be diminished.

The timing would be particularly bad since the Chinese national men's soccer team are debuting in the World Cup in June in South Korea.

"It's hard to say whether this will impact our business or not," said Hu Huaming, head of the Outbound Travel Department of China Youth Travel Service. "Our reputation will suffer from this incident, but if we look at it from a positive perspective, this has sounded a warning bell for us to be more careful."

Said Li, "When such a thing happens, it's only natural that the (ROK) embassy will be more prudent when granting visas in the future."

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