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SEOUL: Seoul on Wednesday banned travel to parts of Cambodia with South Korea shaken by the torture and killing of a college student there.
The move comes as South Korea prepares to send a special team to the Southeast Asian country later Wednesday to discuss cases of fake jobs and scam centers involved in kidnapping dozens of its nationals.
“The Bokor Mountain area in Kampot Province, Bavet City and Poipet City are designated as travel ban zones,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
“South Korean nationals visiting or staying in those areas may be subject to penalties. Citizens planning to travel to such areas are therefore strongly advised to cancel their trips,” it said.
The ban follows an official announcement earlier in the day that about 1,000 South Koreans are believed to be working in Cambodian scam operations, targeting potential victims in South Korea.
“It is believed that around 200,000 people of various nationalities are working in Cambodia’s scam industry, which targets victims worldwide, including in South Korea,” National Security Adviser Wi Sung-lac told reporters.
“A considerable number of South Koreans are also thought to be employed there. While the exact figure is difficult to verify, domestic authorities generally estimate the number at around 1,000.”
Seoul said 63 South Koreans were believed to have been detained by Cambodian authorities, and officials have vowed to bring them home.
“We are arranging a flight to bring them home... We aim to complete this by the end of the week,” Wi said.
Of the 63 detained, there were both “voluntary and involuntary participants” in the scam operations, he said.
“Most of them should be regarded as having committed criminal acts” for taking part in the schemes, he said, regardless of their initial intentions, adding they would be subject to investigation upon returning home.
The South Korean team, headed by the vice foreign minister, will depart on Wednesday evening, said a government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Tortured to death
Some 330 South Koreans had been reported missing or detained against their will in Cambodia between January and August this year, according to Seoul’s foreign ministry, before the number was whittled down to 80 whose safety could not be confirmed.
Seoul plans to “make every diplomatic effort to secure Cambodia’s cooperation,” the presidential office said.
The response team heading to Cambodia includes officials from the police and South Korea’s spy agency, it said.
As well as repatriation discussions, police would also conduct a joint investigation into the recent death of a South Korean college student.
The death of the student, who was reportedly kidnapped and tortured by a crime ring, has shocked South Korea.
Police investigations and an autopsy showed the student, whose body was found in a pickup truck on August 8, “died as a result of severe torture, with multiple bruises and injuries across his body,” according to a Cambodian court statement.
Three Chinese nationals were charged with murder and online fraud on August 11 and remain in pre-trial detention, it said.
Many Korean victims of such crimes in Cambodia are said to have been lured by fraudulent job offers promising high pay, Seoul has said.
Rights group Amnesty International says abuses in Cambodia’s scam centers are happening on a “mass scale.”
There are at least 53 scam compounds in Cambodia where organized criminal groups carry out human trafficking, forced labor, torture, deprivation of liberty and slavery, according to Amnesty.