SEOUL — South Korean police are seeking to detain most of the 64 South Koreans repatriated from Cambodia over allegations they were involved in online scams in the Southeast Asian country, the police said on Monday.

The police have filed requests to the courts to detain 58 of the repatriated citizens, while one is already held in custody, they said in a statement.

The United Nations says the scam centers, which emerged in Southeast Asia during the COVID-19 pandemic and target victims around the world with phone and online scams, generate billions of dollars in revenue every year for criminal networks.

It estimates hundreds of thousands of people are working in the centers, some lured with the promise of a well-paid job but many forced to do so under threats of violence.

The South Koreans’ return to Cambodia on Saturday followed the death of a South Korean student who was lured to Cambodia for what he thought was a high-paying job.

South Korea has issued a “code-black” travel ban for parts of Cambodia over recent increases in cases of detention and “fraudulent employment.”

The government has also set up a task force to help nationals lured into working in scam compounds and secure the release of those held against their will.

The returnees, who were arrested in Cambodia in recent months, are implicated in various crimes linked to voice phishing, romance scams and “no-show” fraud schemes, according to police.

“No-show” scams are a new kind of fraud where scammers make large reservations or take advance payments under a false identity and disappear with the money.

Britain and the United States last week sanctioned the Cambodia-based Prince Group, a multinational network accused of operating vast online scam operations that trafficked people to work in compounds defrauding victims from around the world.

The British government said the centers, located in Cambodia, Myanmar and across Southeast Asia, used fake job adverts to lure workers who were then forced to commit online fraud under threat of torture.

Scam operations in Cambodia are estimated to have about 200,000 workers, including 1,000 South Koreans, according to estimates from South Korean officials.

“The police plan to thoroughly investigate all allegations surrounding the Cambodian scam compounds,” the police said, including the kidnapping or detention of South Koreans.

The police said they were also checking on claims that four of those returned from Cambodia at the weekend were locked up and beaten by the criminal organizations running the scam compounds. — Reuters

WASHINGTON — When two alleged drug traffickers survived a US military strike last week in the Caribbean, they left the Trump administration with a decision to make: send them back home, or find a way to keep them detained.

The US last month started a campaign of attacks in the Caribbean that the Trump administration has described as “a non-international armed conflict” against narco-terrorism.

Yet legal experts aren’t surprised that the US government opted against using the term “prisoners of war” to describe the two survivors of a Thursday attack by the US military on a semi-submersible vessel.

Rather than holding them, the United States sent them back to their home countries, US President Donald J. Trump said on Saturday. The move, which was first reported by Reuters, suggests that for now US officials don’t want to grapple with legal issues surrounding military detention for any alleged drug traffickers captured during the Caribbean operations, legal experts said.

“I think the administration took what it would have viewed as the least worst option,” said Brian Finucane, a senior adviser with the International Crisis Group.

“Sending these people home is a way for the administration (to) turn the page on this embarrassing episode,” he added.

Thursday’s strike was unlike any other the US military has undertaken since it began its attacks in the southern Caribbean in early September.

US officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the aim of the strike was to destroy the semi-submersible. Such ships are commonly used by drug traffickers since they travel under the surface of the water and are hard to identify visually from a distance.

While two people were killed, two others survived and were brought onto a US Navy warship after being rescued by helicopter.

Still, even if the US had ample evidence the two people were involved in drug trafficking, that would not create a clear case for long-term military detention, making a prisoner of war declaration difficult, even if just rhetorically.

“Since there is no actual armed conflict, there is no law of armed conflict authority to hold them regardless what we call them,” said Rachel VanLandingham, a former Air Force lawyer now at Southwestern Law School.

A current US military lawyer told Reuters that the basis for the long-term military detention of the survivors would have been difficult to argue in court.

Even though the Trump administration has told Congress that it is “a non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels, the official said that had little bearing in international and domestic law.

Still, the Trump administration has defied the consensus of legal experts in the past, including by pursuing the deadly strikes on suspected drug trafficking vessels.

The administration’s decision to return the survivors was made within a day, a US official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity, turning the matter over to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and diplomats to sort out the repatriation.

LITTLE AUTHORITY TO HOLD THEM?
Legal experts say the Trump administration did have other options besides repatriation.

It could have tried to argue that the survivors were unlawful combatants and detained them at Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba or even tried to prosecute them in a US court.

But keeping them in military detention would have opened the United States to a complex set of legal and political problems, experts said.

The detainees could have asserted rights under the US legal system, invoking habeas corpus, and challenged the legality of their detention in US federal court.

Mr. Finucane, who was with the Office of the Legal Adviser at the State Department, said going to court would have required the administration to reveal evidence that “likely would have resulted in disclosure (of) information that undermined its narrative about these strikes.”

That could have raised political questions in Washington, where Democratic lawmakers have called for more information on the strikes, which have killed 32 people. 

“The attacks on the boats in the Caribbean have been illegal. If the survivors had appeared in either court or a military tribunal that would have instantly been made clear,” Democratic Congressman Jim Himes said.

The administration has provided little information about the Caribbean strikes so far, including the quantity of drugs the vessels carried or any details about the individuals killed. The most recent attack took place on Friday and killed three people, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro has accused the United States of attacking a fisherman’s vessel in a September strike, which escalated on Sunday into a war of words with Mr. Trump on social media.

Legal experts have questioned why the US military is carrying out the strikes, instead of the Coast Guard, which is the main US maritime law enforcement agency, and why other efforts to halt the shipments aren’t made before resorting to deadly strikes. — Reuters

LA PAZ – Centrist Rodrigo Paz won Bolivia’s presidential runoff on Sunday, defeating conservative rival Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga, as the country’s worst economic crisis in a generation helped propel the end of nearly two decades of leftist rule.

Mr. Paz, a senator from the Christian Democratic Party, won 54.5% of the vote, beating Mr. Quiroga’s 45.5%, according to early results from Bolivia’s electoral tribunal. But Paz’s party does not hold a majority in the country’s legislature, which will force him to forge alliances to govern effectively.

The new president takes office on Nov. 8.

“We must open Bolivia to the world,” said Mr. Paz during his victory speech from La Paz, after Mr. Quiroga conceded defeat.

The 58-year-old senator’s win marks a historic shift for the South American country, governed almost continuously since 2006 by Bolivia’s Movement to Socialism, or MAS, which once enjoyed overwhelming support from the country’s Indigenous majority.

Paz’s moderate platform — pledging to maintain social programs while promoting private sector-led growth — appeared to resonate with left-leaning voters disillusioned by the ruling MAS, founded by former President Evo Morales, but wary of Mr. Quiroga’s proposed austerity measures. He is the third member of his extended family to be elected president of the landlocked nation.

Support for MAS cratered in the August first round amid a deepening economic crisis.

“This election marks a political turning point,” said Glaeldys Gonzalez Calanche, analyst for the Southern Andes at International Crisis Group. “Bolivia is heading in a new direction,” she said.

Both runoff candidates pledged to strengthen diplomatic ties with Washington — strained since 2009 — and seek US-backed financial support to stabilize Bolivia’s fragile economy.

In late September, Mr. Paz unveiled plans for a $1.5-billion economic cooperation deal with US officials to ensure fuel supplies.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this week that both presidential candidates “want stronger, better relations with the United States,” after decades of anti-American leadership. “This election is a transformative opportunity,” he said on Oct. 15.

Outside a polling station in La Paz, Lourdes Mendoza said she had grown weary of the MAS era. “My children were born and raised with a single government,” she said. “I hope they can see other possibilities and alternatives.”

VOTERS WANT ECONOMIC CHANGE
Bolivia’s fragile economy dominated the runoff campaign. Once plentiful natural gas exports have plummeted, inflation is at a 40-year high, and fuel is scarce.

Both candidates campaigned to roll back elements of the MAS era, state-led model, but differed over how drastically. Mr. Paz favored gradual reform, including tax incentives for small businesses and regional fiscal autonomy, while Mr. Quiroga proposed sweeping cuts and an IMF bailout.

“We’re going for a new stage of Bolivian democracy in the 21st century,” Mr. Paz told Reuters two days before the election at his family’s ranch in the southern gas-producing region of Tarija.

“We’re going to try to build an economy for the people,” he said, one where “the state is no longer going to be the central axis.”

Some voters said they were not convinced that his victory represented a true break from MAS: “I think he’s a puppet of the outgoing government,” said 21-year-old Esther Miranda from La Paz, who works in a nail salon.

RUNNING MATE’S POPULIST APPEAL BOOSTS PAZ
Mr. Paz’s campaign was boosted by his running mate Edman Lara, a former police officer known for viral TikTok videos exposing corruption. Mr. Lara’s populist appeal helped Mr. Paz connect with younger and working-class voters, analysts said.

Economists warn the incoming administration faces immediate challenges, including securing fuel supplies and building coalitions in a fragmented legislature.

Outgoing hydrocarbons minister Alejandro Gallardo said last week that the state energy company was struggling to obtain foreign currency for fuel imports.

Mr. Paz told Reuters he was already addressing the issue through deferred payment agreements with fuel suppliers to ensure diesel and gasoline arrive within days of his inauguration.

Mr. Paz said he would also begin phasing out universal fuel subsidies. Targeted support would go to vulnerable groups, while bigger industries such as agribusiness would pay market rates for fuel.

“The market will have to adjust prices, but there are sectors that will have government support until the economy is reactivated,” he said.

Bolivia’s main labor union, the Central Obrera Boliviana (COB), has previously warned it would oppose any threats to the social and economic gains achieved so far, in a sign of the juggling act for Paz’s government to avoid street protests.

Mr. Paz’s PDC won 49 of 130 seats in the lower house and 16 of 36 in the Senate, just ahead of Mr. Quiroga’s coalition, which secured 43 seats in the lower house and 12 in the Senate. — Reuters