A police official told AFP that 64 South Koreans who had been detained in Cambodia on suspicion of participating in alleged cyberscam operations returned home on Saturday and were being detained.
On Wednesday, South Korea had sent a team to Cambodia to look into cases of phony jobs and scams committed against dozens of its citizens.
The official stated that a total of 64 people had just boarded a chartered flight to the Incheon International Airport.
Seoul alleged that Cambodian authorities had detained around 60 South Koreans over the alleged crimes and promised to bring them home.
Following a public outcry in South Korea over the alleged involvement of a crime ring in the torture and killing of a Korean college student in Cambodia this year.
Shortly after boarding the chartered flight, the official reported that the passengers had been detained.
The official stated that all 64 of them have been taken into custody as criminal suspects upon arrival at the Incheon airport and will be assigned to police stations with jurisdiction over their respective cases.
Two police officers each led the suspects into the airport’s arrival hall, many of whom had masks and caps, with their arms firmly tucked either way, according to TV footage.
The majority of them appeared to be handcuffed, with cloth strewn across their restraints.
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According to Park Sung-joo, head of the National Office of Investigation, the repatriated people are responsible for a number of crimes, including “no-show” fraud schemes, romance scams, voice phishing, and other crimes, according to Park Sung-joo, the airport’s head.
He continued, “everyone who returns will have their drug tested as a standard procedure because there have been suspicions of drug use in Cambodia.”
According to Wi Sung-lac, the national security adviser, the detained people were both “voluntary and involuntary participants” in scam operations.
Kim Jina, the vice foreign minister, thanked Cambodian authorities, adding that Seoul confirmed Phnom Penh’s “continued efforts to crack down on such criminal activity and commitment to close cooperation with our country.”
According to Seoul, about 1, 000 South Koreans are thought to be among the 200, 000 people involved in Cambodian scam operations.
Some “pig butchering” scams, which are cryptocurrency investment schemes that build victims’ trust over time before stealing their money, are forced to carry out under the threat of violence.
According to experts, Cambodia’s multibillion-dollar illicit industry has grown exponentially in recent years as a result of thousands of people engaging in online scams, some willingly, while others were forced by the organized criminal organizations that run the fraud networks.
Torture And Human Trafficking
According to Amnesty International, abuses occur in Cambodia’s scam centers on a “mass scale.”
According to the rights group, there are at least 53 shady locations in the nation where organized criminal organizations engage in slavery, human trafficking, forced labor, torture, and deprivation.
Since late June, Cambodia’s anti-cybercrime commission has taken 3, 455 online fraud suspects from 20 different Asian and African nations into custody, according to a statement released on Wednesday.
In 10 of the cases involving online fraud, murder, and human trafficking, authorities reportedly sent dozens of suspected “ringleaders and their accomplices” to court, according to the statement.
More than 2,800 foreign nationals were deported from Cambodia, according to the report, and some “victims from trafficking” were “rescued” by authorities.
South Korean police have announced that they will also look into the recent death of a Cambodian college student. This is a shocking development for South Koreans.
The student was reportedly tortured and kidnapped by a crime ring and found dead in a pickup truck on August 8.
According to a Cambodian court statement, his death was caused by “severe torture, with numerous bruises and injuries across his body,” according to an autopsy.
According to Seoul’s foreign ministry, South Korean and Vietnamese authorities are looking into a Korean woman’s death on October 8 close to the Vietnam-Cambodia border.
Source: Channels TV
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