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A growing number of young South Koreans are vanishing into Southeast Asia’s criminal underworld, lured by the promise of high-paying jobs – only to end up trafficked, tortured or killed. Many, fleeing a stagnant labour market at home, are being deceived by transnational crime syndicates into running online scams and illegal gambling operations. Others join willingly in search of easy money. But all eventually find themselves exploited, victims of criminal enterprises that span the lawless border regions of Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam and beyond. In South Korea, the explosion in cases has provoked a national reckoning. How did one of Asia’s most advanced economies, renowned for its high levels of education and technological prowess, become such a fertile recruitment ground for scam syndicates overseas? A trail of bodies On Tuesday, the body of a 22-year-old university student was finally repatriated to South Korea, more than two months after he was killed. The young man, surnamed Park, left home in July, telling his family he was travelling to Cambodia for an exhibition. Two weeks later, his remains were discovered in a car in Kampot province. Investigators suspect he was held for ransom before being tortured to death. His was not the only death reported this month. The body of a South Korean woman in her thirties was found dead near the Vietnam-Cambodia border on October 7. Police said she died under suspicious circumstances after being “confined to a local hotel for an extended period of time”. As news of the abductions spread, South Korea banned travel to Cambodia’s scam hotspots and President Lee Jae-myung dispatched an emergency inter-agency task force to investigate. South Koreans have been cancelling trips to Cambodia and other popular Southeast Asian destinations en masse, as the foreign ministry reported last week that diplomatic missions overseas had recorded no fewer than 550 kidnappings between January 2024 and August this year. Even so, attempted departures have continued. Korean Air staff last week reportedly stopped a university student en route to Phnom Penh who said he was heading for an overseas posting that promised high wages. Dozens of South Koreans detained in Cambodia for alleged involvement in cyberscam operations returned home on Saturday. State prosecutors later asked local courts to issue arrest warrants for 59 of the returnees accused of operating online fraud schemes. But Jo Ho-yeon, an anti-gambling activist in South Korea, told This Week in Asia that those who were repatriated represented just the tip of the iceberg. He estimated that South Korean nationals being actively sought by their families only represented 20 to 30 per cent of those “who are victimised by scams” in Cambodia. “There’s only a couple of hundred South Koreans who have been reported missing by authorities, but this is only a small proportion considering that the police do not know the exact number,” said Jo, a reformed criminal who previously helped run illegal casinos across Southeast Asia before turning his life around. Easy money? Official figures from South Korea’s Justice Ministry show that between 2,000 and 3,000 of the country’s nationals who departed for Cambodia over the past three years have yet to return. One young man who did escape told This Week in Asia that he initially left for Cambodia to work at an illegal casino in hopes of earning a “massive payout”. “I used to work various jobs in South Korea like working at a pub, but my friend told me that his older brother was looking for someone to manage personnel at his casino site,” said the 25-year-old, surnamed Lee. “It offered a big salary.” When rumours began to spread about killings in Cambodia, Lee’s group fled to Vietnam, where he remains to this day. “I could’ve gone back to South Korea, but work here isn’t that hard,” he said. They’re just ordinary people who studied at universities and want to make a good living Jo Ho-yeon, anti-gambling activist Local media reports suggest a growing number of South Koreans are heading abroad to find work. This rising interest in overseas employment reflects a domestic labour market in distress, according to Kim Yoo-bin, a senior research fellow at the Korea Labor Institute. He said South Korean companies were reducing the number of new hires while primarily limiting recruitment to experienced professionals. “This means that without prior experience, it’s difficult to find employment, making it quite challenging for young people to secure jobs right now,” Kim told This Week in Asia. He added that in South Korea, “simply being unemployed carries a stigma”, with some turning to overseas postings anywhere that promises a salary or experience to strengthen their résumés as a result. For Jo, the anti-gambling activist, the main factor uniting all South Koreans entrapped by Southeast Asia’s criminal underworld is their youth. “If there’s an underlying pattern, it’s that most of the employees are young people who are unemployed,” he said. “They’re just ordinary people who studied at universities and want to make a good living.”
