South Koreans freed from Cambodian scam centres return home under arrest

Dozens of South Korean nationals who had been detained in Cambodia for alleged involvement in cyberscam operations have been returned home and placed under arrest, according to South Korean authorities.

Officers arrested the individuals on board a chartered flight sent to collect them from Cambodia, a South Korean police official told the AFP news agency.

“A total of 64 nationals just arrived at the Incheon international airport on a chartered flight,” the official said on Saturday, adding that all of the individuals have been taken into custody as criminal suspects.

South Korea sent a team to Cambodia earlier this week to investigate dozens of its nationals who were kidnapped into the Southeast Asian nation’s online scam industry.

South Korean National Security Adviser Wi Sung-lac previously said the detained individuals included both “voluntary and involuntary participants” in scam operations.

On Friday, Cambodian Ministry of Interior spokesman Touch Sokhak said the repatriation agreement with South Korea was the “result of good cooperation in suppression of scams between the two countries”.

Online scam operations have proliferated in Cambodia since the COVID-19 pandemic, when the global shutdown saw many Chinese-owned casinos and hotels in the country pivot to illicit operations.

Operating from industrial-scale scam centres, tens of thousands of workers perpetrate online romance scams known as “pig-butchering”, often targeting people in the West in a vastly lucrative industry responsible for the theft of tens of billions of dollars each year.

Pig-butchering – a euphemism for fattening up a victim before they are slaughtered – often involves fraudulent cryptocurrency investment schemes that build trust over time before funds are stolen.

Parallel industries have blossomed in Laos, the Philippines and war-ravaged Myanmar, where accounts of imprisonment and abuse in scam centres are the most severe.

An estimated 200,000 people are working in dozens of large-scale scam operations across Cambodia, with many scam compounds owned by or linked to the country’s wealthy and politically connected. About 1,000 South Korean nationals are believed to be among that figure.

On Tuesday, the United States and United Kingdom announced sweeping sanctions against a Cambodia-based multinational crime network, identified as the Prince Group, for running a chain of “scam centres” across the region.

UK authorities seized 19 London properties worth more than 100 million pounds ($134m) linked to the Prince Group, which markets itself as a legitimate real estate, financial services and consumer businesses firm.

Prosecutors said that at one point, Prince Group’s chair, Chinese-Cambodian tycoon Chen Zhi, bragged that scam operations were pulling in $30m a day.

Chen – who has served as an adviser to Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet and his father, long-ruling former Prime Minister Hun Sen – is also wanted on charges of wire fraud and money laundering, according to the UK and US.

Still at large, he faces up to 40 years in prison if convicted.

The move by the UK and US against the Prince Group came as South Korea announced a ban on travel to parts of Cambodia on Wednesday amid growing concerns over its citizens entering the scam industry.

South Korean police have said they will also conduct a joint investigation into the recent death of a college student in Cambodia who was reportedly kidnapped and tortured by a crime ring.

The South Korean student was found dead in a pick-up truck on August 8 in Cambodia’s southern Kampot province, with an autopsy revealing he “died as a result of severe torture, with multiple bruises and injuries across his body”.