South Korean officials said Wednesday that they were trying to bring back missing South Koreans from Cambodia, where hundreds of people have disappeared into online scam centers that steal billions of dollars from victims worldwide.
Outrage in South Korea has grown after 330 people were reported missing after traveling to Cambodia this year, including a 22-year-old university student who was later found dead. Others have been tortured and confined by those running the scams, South Korean officials said.
The victims were lured by high-paying job offers, only to be forced to defraud other South Koreans, officials said.
Most of those reported to have disappeared have since been accounted for, but 79 were still missing in Cambodia, Wi Sung-lac, South Korea’s national security director said at a news conference on Wednesday. He added that the government would also try to repatriate about 60 people who had been detained by the Cambodian authorities.
South Korea is the latest nation to try to combat Cambodia’s scam industry.
In February, China led a crackdown on scam compounds in Myanmar and Cambodia. On Tuesday, the United States and Britain imposed sanctions on parts of a Cambodian conglomerate, Prince Group, which they said was running scam networks worldwide. U.S. federal prosecutors indicted its chairman, Chen Zhi, and seized $15 billion in cryptocurrency that they said were proceeds from his fraud and money laundering schemes.
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