Duterte claimed he saw Jung Kyungdoo, who came to town to play golf, hit his child with a club while at the Apo Golf and Country Club last Sept. 7. The mayor promptly requested the BID to deport Jung for violating Philippine laws on child abuse. The BID obliged.
"I admit my mistake. Please, I'm asking an apology. (I'm) hoping that you could give me some consideration. Give me a chance to come back and stay here," Jung said in the letter to the mayor.
Jung said he came to Davao to teach his son how to play golf and chose the city "because it's a safe and nice place for foreigners like us."
The Korean said a personnel from the BID visited him and informed him "to go back to Korea because I violated the law."
Jung, in his letter to Duterte, said he now knows the laws in the city “most especially about family matters and that you have now a program about Bantay Bata 163.”
But Duterte said "if sorry siya, then sorry na lang pud" (If he is sorry, then I'm sorry too).
The mayor said earlier that if a foreigner is in the Philippines, he has to follow the laws here. The mayor said the sight of Jung hitting his son whenever the minor erred in the game pissed him off.
In January, Duterte gave a strongly worded speech against erring foreigners in the city during the ASEAN Tourism Forum (ATF). Duterte said foreigners are welcome to Davao and Mindanao as long as they do not abuse and violate local laws.
Only foreigners with bad intentions will feel threatened, he said in front of hundreds of forum participants from all over the world.
During the ATF, the Department of Tourism presented that Koreans, Japanese, and Chinese are among the Philippines' top tourists. From January to June this year, the DOT reported 179,000 Korean tourists in the country.