[Gangnam Perspective] The uneasy victory of the Cambodia repatriations

A Korean Air flight KE9690 charter plane departs from Phnom Penh in Cambodia and comes to a halt on the runway at Incheon International Airport. Seventy-three Korean members of criminal syndicates involved in scams, including fraud and kidnapping-robbery, file out of the aircraft with their heads bowed. Camera flashes pop one after another, aimed at the eyes visible above their masks. More police officers than returnees line up to monitor them, and TV screens carry the caption, "The largest repatriation operation in history." Right on cue, a neatly scripted tale, like something out of a spy movie—"Multiple ministries worked together, and we made surprise arrests on board"—flows out in the anchor’s polished voice.
Yet even as I watch these smoothly edited images, it is hard to feel at ease. Standing before this flawless "victory report" engineered by government ministries, I hesitate: should I applaud, or question what lies behind this strangely dissonant scene? Is this footage the end of a tragedy that began in Cambodia, or just the tip of a vast iceberg briefly breaking the surface?
Cambodia’s notorious crime compounds are anything but a sudden disaster. For years, warning signs have drifted through obscure internet forums and across social media, carrying a rank smell of danger. Yet the state remained a bystander as that danger slowly faded into the background. At best, it watched as a detached observer. Over time, the risk stopped being a handful of isolated cases and turned into a way of life. Crime took on a grotesque order of its own and devoured Koreans as expendable parts.
Over several years, these groups swindled 48.6 billion won from 869 Koreans. Of the suspects, 70 are believed to have taken part in scam operations such as romance scams and running investment "reading" chat rooms. Three others face charges including kidnapping-robbery and illegal gambling. One offender posed as an investment expert and stole about 19.4 billion won from young workers just starting out and from retirees. Also repatriated were fugitives who committed sex crimes against minors, fled to Cambodia, and then helped facilitate scams; and gang members who held victims captive in scam compounds, used them as hostages to threaten families back in Korea, and extorted money. A married couple who ran a romance scam ring used deepfake technology to pose as fictitious people and defrauded 104 victims of about 12 billion won. They even changed their faces through plastic surgery, but still failed to escape arrest.
Even so, the fanfare—reaching all the way to Cheong Wa Dae (the Blue House)—feels far from satisfying. The numbers suggest that many more people were left off this plane. In October last year, Wi Sung-lac, Director of the Office of National Security, estimated that "around 1,000 Koreans" were involved in Cambodia’s online scam industry. The National Intelligence Service (NIS) put the figure at up to 2,000. Local crime figures and Korean residents on the ground testify that "thousands of people are working in some 50 scam compounds." Many may already have moved elsewhere, and many more may still be trapped, working anonymously. The only figure the government cites with any confidence is that roughly 80 Koreans are currently unaccounted for.
Despite this, society’s reaction is strikingly blunt. Comments pile up under news articles saying, "No one forced them to go" or "They brought it on themselves trying to make easy money." The government, for its part, seems eager to prove its prowess as a state that punishes, zooming in on wrists in handcuffs.
While society and the state each tidy up the case in their own way, the root problems quietly slip out of view. The long years during which the danger was left unattended, the systems that failed to turn warnings into real signals, and the responsibility for delaying intervention simply because the crimes took place beyond our borders—all of this remains largely unexamined. Reducing the incident to a matter of individual deviance is itself another beginning. The next job posting, the next messenger invitation, the next plane ticket is already in circulation. If we truly want to bring this crisis to an end, we should not be staging the next repatriation scene. We should be building the conditions that make such scenes unnecessary. Otherwise, today’s victory report is nothing more than the opening chapter of yet another story.
jjw@fnnews.com Reporter