Statement: The content of this article is written with references to authoritative materials in combination with personal opinions, and the source has been specified at the end of the text, please be aware.
In October 2025, a special flight landed at Korean Incheon airport, with 190 South Korean police detaining 64 suspects wearing bracelets.
Cambodia Prime Minister Hun Manet, who was still emphasizing sovereignty a few days ago, immediately cooperated with the repatriation operation. Unexpectedly, South Korea directly froze the assets of 91 billion won in the Cambodia Prince Group. This giant that once accounted for 40% of Cambodia's GDP fell.
So how did all this happen?
Disguised as an imperial fraud.
In August this year, the body of Park Min-ho, a 22-year-old Korean college student, was found in Kampot Province, Cambodia. Forensic expertise showed that he died of cardiac arrest caused by long-term abuse. The young man who wanted to work to earn tuition this summer eventually died in the iron cage of the electronic fraud park.
According to the statistics of the South Korean Ministry of Justice, the number of Koreans who went to Cambodia in 2021 was 113 more than the number of Koreans who returned to Cambodia in 2021, and by 2024 this number has surged to 3,248 people. In the first eight months of this year, 900 people were "disappeared".The majority of these are young people aged 20 to 30, attracted by the advertisements on social platforms "monthly paying $3,000 in factory work", resulting in passports being confiscated and evaporated.
According to reports received by the South Korean police, these parks have formed a streamline.They have specifically opened a "Korean Special Place" by early Koreans who were deceived in the past to serve as "Teacher Fu", according to the script compiled to deceive domestic compatriots in their native language.
An escaped victim, A, said that when he fled to the local police station for help, he found that the director was drinking tea and chatting with members of the fraud gang. The police asked him to provide photo or video evidence to file a case, but his mobile phone had long been confiscated by the park.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s 2025 report states that South-East Asia’s annual e-fraud revenue is close to $40 billion.
The western border area of Cambodia has become the base camp of this industry due to weak supervision and intertwined local forces. Prince Group is the leader among them, controlling 10 electronic fraud parks, equipped with 1200 mobile phones and 76,000 social accounts, and can defraud US$30 million a day during peak periods.
behind the Korean rage.
The response of the South Korean government was surprisingly fast. On October 15th, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs directly issued a four-level travel alert to three regions in Cambodia, which is the highest level of South Korea's travel warning system. If you go there, you will be imprisoned and fined.
On the same day, South Korea froze the assets of Prince Group in South Korea by 91 billion won. The next day, Deputy Foreign Minister Jin Zhenwo flew to Phnom Penh with officials from the National Police Agency, the Ministry of Justice and the National Intelligence Agency to have a direct interview with Prime Minister Hong Manai.
This combination boxing caught Cambodia off guard. Hong Manai originally wanted to bargain and asked South Korea to relax travel restrictions, saying that it would affect Cambodia's tourism industry and investment environment. However, South Korea's attitude is very tough. President Lee Jae-myung said at the cabinet meeting: "We must use all efforts to bring our compatriots home and let the electronic fraud groups destroy their families."
South Korea's real trump card is to draw money from the bottom. They joined forces with the United States and Britain to launch a simultaneous attack. The U.S. Department of Justice directly confiscated 127,000 bitcoins from the Prince Group, worth US$15 billion, setting a record for the largest asset forfeiture in history.
Britain froze 19 properties of the group in London and sanctioned six affiliated enterprises. The Office of Foreign Assets Control of the U.S. Treasury Department imposed financial sanctions on 146 targets of Prince Group, completely cutting off its international trading channels.
This hit the back of Cambodia, and the entire Cambodian financial system was trembling because of the suspension of transactions by the Prince’s Bank controlled by the Prince Group. Thailand’s former prime minister, Petun Tan, has publicly said that the fraud industry accounts for 40% of Cambodia’s GDP, the pillar industry collapsed, local fiscal income fell sharply and unemployment rose.
Why did Cambodia compromise?
Hong-Maney's trouble came not only from South Korea, but he implemented the "pro-American" policy after he came to power, forcing China to invest in the Southern Canal project, from 51% to 10%, and also signed cooperation agreements with the Philippines on the South China Sea issue, which seriously affected China-Cambodia relations.
There is also considerable domestic pressure. On Cambodia's social media, calls for cracking down on electric fraud are growing, and people question collusion between the government and criminal groups. Hong Manai found that if he continued to confront South Korea, it could trigger street protests and shake the foundation of his governance. Cooperating with international action has instead become an opportunity to weaken local power and divert people's attention from economic issues.
In the early morning of October 18, 64 South Korean suspects in Cambodia were repatriated on a chartered plane. Cambodia police have arrested 3455 suspected electric fraud in the past four months, involving 20 countries. When meeting with the South Korean working group, Hong Manai promised to pursue the murderer and agreed that South Korean forensic doctors would directly intervene in the investigation. This once-arrogant electrofraud empire collapsed under the joint international attack.
The revelation of this war.
South Korea's success has revealed that dealing with transnational crime is useless by diplomatic dictates alone, and must be real.They integrate law enforcement, financial sanctions, and public opinion war in depth to form a network of strikes.
Jeremy Douglas, director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, warned that the Southeast Asian Mekong River region has now become the world’s largest fraud network, and an illegal gambling site.
These criminal groups are not simple, and they also use blockchain and AI deep fake technology to engage in money laundering activities on a global scale. At present, there is no way to deal with this situation by relying on the strength of one country alone. Therefore, he called on all countries to work together to formulate regional solutions and establish a unified cross-border law enforcement mechanism and financial supervision standards.
As of 21 October, Cambodia has arrested more than 10 South Koreans and rescued two detainees.The South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it will continue to pursue the previously mentioned 80 "unknown" citizens.The multinational campaign against e-fraud is ongoing, but the overthrow of the Prince Group has proved that as long as countries cooperate genuinely to cut the flow of funds and break local protectionism, the crazy criminal network will collapse.
Cybercrime is an asymmetrical war where criminals take advantage of global vulnerabilities to wander on the edge of the law, while nations are still trapped in the border of sovereignty to fight alone. When nations can be as real as South Korea, e-fraud groups are really scared. After all, some bottom lines once touched, the cost is not what they can afford.
Source of information:
Upstream News [Cambodia Electronic Fraud Park targets Koreans and opens a "Korean Special"]
Jimu News [Korean college students were tricked into going to Cambodia and killed, and the number of Koreans involved in electric fraud in Cambodia far exceeded the government's previous estimate of more than 1,000]
The South Korean government has denied that it will go to Cambodia to fight electronic fraud: it is using diplomatic means; 80 South Korean citizens are detained in Cambodia, the South Korean government issued a travel ban.