The South Korean president took to X today, February 6, to comment on the current crackdown on online scams in Cambodia. This time, however, he did not write in Khmer, like he had in a recent message, which was subsequently deleted.
Lee Jae-myung shared a report by the network v.daum regarding a major scam centre bust that took place in Svay Rieng province on February 2, which involved over 2,000 suspects, the majority of them Chinese nationals.
“If you touch Koreans, you’ll be ruined… Among the 2,000 foreign criminals arrested from the Cambodian scam crime syndicate, not a single one is Korean. Doesn’t it feel like voice phishing has become a bit quieter lately?” he tweeted, alongside the article.
He praised the Korean authorities who are working with their Cambodian counterparts to suppress scam centres, noting that the raid as the largest of its kind to date. It was unclear whether Korean authorities played a role in the Svat Rieng operation.
Although there were no South Koreans among the more than 2,000 suspects detained, Cambodian authorities detained hundreds of Koreans between 2025 and early 2026. They were both suspects and victims of online scams, according to reports by the Secretariat of the Committee to Combat Technology Crime (CCTC).
In 2025, Cambodian authorities deported 244 South Koreans for their involvement in online crimes. At the end of January, the General Department of Immigration (GDI) deported an additional 73 Koreans.
Korea’s v.daum network reported that some Korean criminal gangs were hired by Chinese criminal organisations to commit these offenses from Cambodia. The reporting did not classify the Koreans as victims.
Cambodia aims to clean up online scam crimes on a large scale, with widespread crackdowns conducted since mid-2025. Prime Minister Hun Manet stated on February 5 that Cambodia will eliminate these crimes soon.
