A cornered community: Police officers escort the repatriated South Korean scam victims at Incheon International Airport. Their return from Cambodia, where they were detained for online scams, also exposed the structural neglect in their home country. — YONHAP/AFP
WHEN 64 young South Koreans arrived at Incheon Airport in handcuffs on Oct 18, the scene looked less like a crime roundup than a mirror held up to the nation’s quiet tragedy.
They were not hardened criminals but victims of a cruel equation: despair multiplied by debt, driven by the promise of “10 million won (RM29,445) a month”. Their return from Cambodia, where they were detained for online scams, exposed not only the brutality of foreign criminal networks, but structural neglect that has left an entire generation cornered.
