All 4 suspects in Bundang Chinese restaurant attack identified as Chinese nationals

All four suspects in a vandalism attack on a Chinese restaurant — whose name matches that of China's top leader — have been identified as Chinese nationals, police said Sunday.

Police said the suspects fled the country through an airport on the day of the incident and that authorities plan to seek international judicial cooperation to pursue them.

The Bundang Police Station in Gyeonggi Province said it had identified four Chinese male suspects ranging in age from their 20s to 40s, including a man in his 40s referred to as A, on charges including joint property destruction.

A and the others are suspected of breaking into a Chinese restaurant in Bundang-gu, Seongnam, at around 2:40 a.m. Thursday — the first day of the chuseok holiday — and spraying lacquer and paint throughout the interior. They are also suspected of spraying an unidentified substance, believed to be pesticide, on food ingredients inside the restaurant.

The suspects concealed their faces with masks and hats and carried out the attack for about an hour before taking a taxi together to a lodging in Seoul, then traveling to Incheon International Airport and boarding flights back to China.

They are believed to have fled to Yantai and Shanghai, among other destinations.

Police launched an investigation after the restaurant owner reported at around 8:30 a.m. Thursday that someone had broken in and damaged fixtures inside the establishment.

Investigators tracked the suspects' movements using CCTV footage and identified them later that afternoon, but the suspects had already left the country on morning flights.

Police determined that the suspects had entered South Korea visa-free on two separate occasions — between one month and one week before the incident — and had been living in the country in the interim.

Investigators believe the suspects learned the restaurant would be closed during the chuseok holiday and carried out the attack as planned.

With the suspects having fled to China, an arrest appears unlikely for the time being, leaving the motive unclear.

The leading theory is that the suspects targeted the restaurant out of resentment over its use of a name identical to that of China's top leader.

The restaurant owner told Yonhap in an earlier phone interview that the establishment had operated under the same name for eight years, but that protest calls and visits had begun arriving out of nowhere a few months earlier. The owner added that about two months before the attack, someone had sprayed black paint on the restaurant's sign and fled, prompting a police report — though officers said tracking the perpetrator would be difficult given the limitations of available surveillance footage.

"We confirmed there were four suspects fleeing by taxi after the attack and quickly identified them that same day — but by then, they had already boarded their flights," a police official said. "We plan to continue tracking the suspects through international judicial cooperation and other means."