Arrests in Southeast Asia rise 2.5-fold, repatriations 2.6-fold ... One year of a whole-of-government response to transnational crime

[Financial News] One year after the government began a whole-of-government response to transnational crime spanning national borders, arrests in Southeast Asia and the repatriation of fugitives from overseas increased more than twofold. The change came after the government shifted from having individual ministries handle overseas cases separately to directly targeting criminal hubs abroad.
On the 21st, the pan-government Transnational Crime Special Response Task Force, which includes 10 agencies such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Justice, the Prosecution Service and the National Police Agency, released its results from the first year of the response. On the coming 23rd, it will be one year since President Lee Jae-myung ordered a full-scale response at a meeting of relevant ministers on October 23 last year.
The task force was launched on December 29 last year after a South Korean college student was kidnapped and murdered in Cambodia and a series of scam crimes followed. Scams are fraud schemes that induce victims to send money under the pretense of investment or romance.
On January 23, the government repatriated as a group a record 73 suspects accused of defrauding about 48.6 billion won from 869 South Korean citizens. On November 27 last year, it arrested Chinese national Li Guangho, the ringleader of the kidnapping and murder of a college student.
Investigations also targeted the ‘heads’ of criminal organizations. Authorities arrested in the United Arab Emirates, in cooperation with UAE authorities, the mastermind behind an illegal gambling website on a 10-trillion-won scale, and repatriated him on July 4. A key member of an organization behind a gambling website in the 3-trillion-won range was also repatriated on the 14th. Fourteen South Korean members of a scam organization who had moved their base to Kazakhstan to evade a crackdown in Cambodia were arrested on July 23 and brought back to South Korea.
The repatriation of Park Wang-yeol, a case that had remained unresolved for nearly 10 years, also took place during this period. During a summit with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines on March 3, President Lee personally requested his extradition, and the repatriation was secured about three weeks later, on March 25.
He was repatriated under a temporary-surrender arrangement. Under this system, the requested country temporarily hands over a fugitive to the requesting country so it can conduct criminal proceedings, while suspending its own trial or enforcement of the sentence. Park Wang-yeol was reportedly serving a prison sentence after a local court sentenced him in April 2022 to a minimum term of 52 years and a maximum term of 60 years for the so-called “Sugarcane Field Murder,” in which he killed three South Koreans in the Philippines in 2016. The enforcement of his sentence there had been an obstacle to his repatriation.
The results were also reflected in the figures. From January to September, 834 people were arrested in Southeast Asia, 2.5 times the 340 recorded during the same period the previous year, while repatriations of fugitives rose 2.6-fold, from 254 to 655. Reports of kidnapping and confinement linked to scams in Cambodia fell 95.1%, from 386 to 19. The number of voice-phishing cases dropped 50.2%, from 18,746 to 9,333, and losses fell 57.5%, from 986.7 billion won to 419.6 billion won.
The government plans to combine efforts to target criminal bases overseas, arrest ringleaders, trace and recover criminal proceeds, and protect victims, thereby dismantling the foundations of criminal organizations. A law related to independent forfeiture, passed by the National Assembly in August, also established a legal basis for confiscating criminal proceeds and ordering their recovery even if perpetrators die or flee overseas.
A government official said, “The past year was a time when we brought together capabilities that had been scattered across different ministries and fundamentally changed the Republic of Korea’s approach to transnational crime,” adding, “We will marshal all the government’s capabilities until transnational crime that threatens the lives and property of the people is eradicated.”

[email protected] Kim Dong-gyu Reporter