Police arrest 57 South Koreans over alleged links to online scams

A delegation of South Korean lawmakers visit a building complex that was allegedly used for online scam work, outside Phnom Penh

Cambodian police said yesterday they arrested 57 South Korean nationals over alleged links to an online scam organization in the Southeast Asian country.

The arrests happened on Wednesday as police raided a building on the outskirts of the capital, Phnom Penh. Police found 86 people working at the complex, including 57 South Koreans and 29 Chinese, according to a statement by Cambodia’s Secretariat of the Commission for Combating Online Scams.

A visiting group of South Korean lawmakers accompanied the raid. The delegation, led by Kim Seok-ki, arrived in Cambodia on Tuesday as part of an on-site parliamentary inspection into reports of alleged employment scams, illegal confinement and torture of South Korean nationals in Cambodia.

It is the second recent delegation from South Korea to visit Cambodia after a group last week led by Vice Foreign Minister Kim Jina.

On Friday last week, Cambodia repatriated about 50 South Koreans who had been formally arrested on accusations they worked for online scam organizations.

They are among the 64 South Koreans who were detained in Cambodia in recent months and were flown to South Korea on a charter flight on Saturday. Upon arrival, they were detained while police investigated whether they voluntarily joined the scam organizations in Cambodia or were forced to work there.

The repatriation follows the death of a South Korean student who was reportedly forced to work in a scam center in Cambodia. His death triggered public outrage in South Korea, prompting the government to send a delegation to Phnom Penh for talks on a joint response.

Online scams, many based in Southeast Asian countries, have risen sharply since the COVID-19 pandemic and produced two sets of victims: the tens of thousands of people who have been forced to work as scammers under the threat of violence, and the targets of their fraud. Monitoring groups say online scams earn international criminal gangs billions of dollars annually.

The Korean National Police Agency said Tuesday that local courts so far have issued arrest warrants for 49 of the 64 returnees. It said a court will review whether to approve arrests for 10 others on Tuesday. Police earlier said those 59 people were accused of engaging in online fraud activities like romantic scams, bogus investment pitches or voice phishing, apparently targeting fellow South Koreans at home.

Yesterday’s statement by Cambodia’s Secretariat of the Commission for Combating Online Scams said police confiscated 126 laptops and 30 handphones in the raid.

It said Cambodian police shared with the Korean parliamentary delegation materials that showed that the Korean nationals who worked at the scam center did so voluntarily, without force or intimidation.

Over the past four months, police have raided 92 locations in 18 provinces and arrested 3,455 people from 20 nationalities, the statement said. Most were victims and have already been deported from Cambodia. Seventy-five people believed to be behind the scams have been charged in a Cambodian court. SOPHENG CHEANG, PHNOM PENH, MDT/AP