kidnapped

SEOUL, Oct. 14 (UPI) — The South Korean government will send a joint response team to Cambodia to oversee the repatriation of citizens being held in the country after a surge in kidnappings, Seoul’s presidential office said Tuesday, following the highly publicized torture and murder of a 22-year-old who was lured by a scam job order.

The team, led by Second Vice Foreign Minister Kim Ji-na, will depart Wednesday, presidential spokesman Kim Nam-joon told reporters. Members of the National Police Agency and the National Intelligence Service will participate in the mission.

“The Ministry will make every possible diplomatic effort to encourage Cambodian cooperation and, in consultation with relevant ministries and agencies, strengthen the embassy’s response capabilities, including increasing the number of police officers stationed at the Cambodian embassy,” Kim said.

“The government will also consider upgrading travel alerts for key crime areas in Cambodia to prevent further damage,” he added.

The move comes after South Korean President Lee Jae Myung on Tuesday called for government ministries to use “all available resources” to help South Koreans trapped in Cambodia return home.

“Relevant ministries should consult with the Cambodian government and expedite the establishment of a regular cooperation system between law enforcement authorities,” Lee said at a Cabinet meeting, according to his office.

According to data from lawmaker Na Kyung-won, the number of kidnappings of South Koreans in Cambodia soared to 220 in 2024 and reached 330 through August of this year. In previous years, the average was between 10 and 20.

Most of the cases are linked to transnational crime gangs running large-scale voice phishing rings and illegal gambling operations. Victims are lured with fake job offers and then held against their will and forced to participate in criminal activities.

In one recent case that sparked public outrage, a Korean university student was found dead near Bokor Mountain in Kampot Province after being detained and tortured. Three Chinese nationals were indicted on murder and fraud charges by Cambodian prosecutors, state-run news agency Agence Khmer Press reported on Friday.

The rash of crime reports prompted Seoul’s Foreign Minister Cho Hyun to summon Cambodia’s ambassador on Friday. The Foreign Ministry also raised its travel alert for the capital city of Phnom Penh and certain regions connected to the employment scams and detentions.

Seoul’s National Police Agency said Sunday that it planned to launch a “Korean Desk” in Cambodia to handle cases involving Korean nationals.

Lawmakers with South Korea’s opposition People Power Party on Tuesday criticized the government’s response to the rising number of crimes in Cambodia.

“Crimes targeting Koreans in Cambodia are not a new phenomenon, but the government has been inactive for some time and is only now taking action,” Rep. Choi Bo-yoon said in a statement. “Protecting the lives and safety of our citizens is the most important responsibility of any nation, but the Lee Jae Myung administration is increasingly putting the entire nation at risk.”

Choi called for a “full-scale, national effort” that includes beefing up local investigative cooperation and filling diplomatic positions, including the vacant ambassador post in Cambodia.

The ruling Democratic Party, meanwhile, blamed the previous administration of President Yoon Suk Yeol for failing to address the surge in crimes, which began while he was in office.

The DP’s Policy Committee Chairperson Han Jeoung-ae said that Yoon increased overseas development assistance to Cambodia while neglecting the safety of Korean citizens in the country.

“It has been revealed that the government reduced its international crime response personnel and ignored requests for more police officers,” Han said at a party meeting Tuesday. “Meanwhile, the number of reported detentions in Cambodia increased tenfold from 21 in 2023 to 221 in 2024.”

MOSCOW has weighed in on the case of a missing British three-year-old amid fears the child has been “kidnapped” by his Russian mother.

A pundit on the country’s state media said the kid is “Russian” and demanded the Kremlin “protect the mother’s right” to be with her child.

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Oliver Pugh has been the subject of a frantic police search since he went missing in Marbella, on the Costa del Sol.

He has a British father and a Russian mother, who are now separated.

The family lived in Spain, where are court order had barred the child from being removed from the country.

Spanish cops fear Oliver was taken to Russia – where he would be out of reach of the father. 

Russian authorities have not officially commented on whether the child is in the country.

But state media propagandist Vladimir Kornilov said today on Telegram: “It is suspected that she took her son to Russia. 

“This, of course, is not yet a fact. 

“But if this is indeed the case, it seems to me that we must do everything possible to protect the mother’s right to be with her Russian child.

“Well, if London can call him British, why can’t I call him Russian by the same logic?”

He added: “How [do] you determine that the boy is British if his mother might think otherwise?”

Oliver is described as being 2ft 7in tall, with blond hair and distinctive grey eyes. 

Spain‘s National Police are urging anyone with information to contact them. 

A spokesperson said: “We are treating this as a parental abduction. 

“We believe the mother has left Spain and has taken the boy to her homeland, which is Russia.”

Neither the mother or the father has been named.

The Foreign Office is “supporting the family of a British child who has been reported missing in Spain”.

Diplomats have been in contact with the Spanish authorities. 

It is unclear whether the child has joint Russian citizenship, or whether an international arrest warrant has been issued for the mother. 

Russia always refuses to extradite its own citizens.

Spain’s Ministry of Interior published a picture of Oliver shortly after his disappearance.

He is last believed to have been seen in Marbella on July 4.

Defence minister says soldiers taken while evacuating area after a military operation that killed 11 rebels.

At least 34 government soldiers have been kidnapped by armed civilians in a jungle in southeastern Colombia after clashes that killed 11 fighters, including a commander of a dissident faction of the former FARC rebel group, Defence Minister Pedro Sanchez says.

The fighting occurred on Sunday in a rural part of the El Retorno municipality in the province of Guaviare and involved members of the Central General Staff (EMC), a group of former fighters with the left-wing FARC, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, who rejected a 2016 peace deal with the government.

Sanchez said on Tuesday that the soldiers were taken as they were evacuating the area after a military operation that killed an EMC commander and 10 other rebels.

“This is an illegal, criminal action by people in civilian clothing,” Sanchez told reporters. “This is a kidnapping.”

The jungle region is considered a strategic corridor for drug trafficking and is known for its extensive coca crops, the main ingredient used to produce cocaine.

It followed a similar abduction in June when the army said 57 soldiers were seized by civilians in a southwestern mountainous area, a key zone for cocaine production and one of the most tense in the country’s ongoing security crisis.

The Colombian army has maintained that the civilians in the region receive orders from the EMC, the main FARC dissident group.

Armed groups – which fund themselves through drug trafficking, illegal mining and other crimes – remain present in Colombia after a six-decade conflict that has killed more than 450,000 people despite the peace deal with the FARC nine years ago when it was Colombia’s largest rebel group.

Last week, at least 18 people were killed and dozens injured in two attacks attributed to dissident FARC factions.

In Cali, the country’s third most populous city, a vehicle packed with explosives detonated on Thursday near a military aviation school, killing six people and injuring 71, according to the mayor’s office.

Hours earlier, a National Police Black Hawk helicopter participating in a coca crop eradication operation was downed by a drone in the municipality of Amalfi in the department of Antioquia, killing 12 police officers.

President Gustavo Petro blamed the attacks on dissident factions of FARC.

President Gustavo Petro says freeing the seized soldiers ‘is imperative’.

The Colombian army says more than 50 soldiers have been seized by civilians in a southwest mountainous area.

A platoon of soldiers was the first to be seized on Saturday during an operation in El Tambo, a municipality that is part of an area known as the Micay Canyon, a key zone for cocaine production and one of the most tense in the country’s ongoing security crisis.

On Sunday, another group of soldiers was surrounded by at least 200 residents as they headed towards the town of El Plateado, in the same region.

“As a result of both events [both kidnappings], a total of four noncommissioned officers and 53 professional soldiers remain deprived of their liberty,” the army said on Sunday.

General Federico Alberto Mejia, who leads military operations in the southwest, added in a video that it was a “kidnapping” by rebels who had “infiltrated” the community.

The Colombian army has maintained that the civilians in the region receive orders from the Central General Staff (EMC), the main dissident group of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) that refused to be part of a peace deal with the government in 2016.

President Gustavo Petro, who has pledged to bring peace to the country, said on social media that freeing the soldiers “is imperative”.

The left-wing leader has been trying for months to ensure that the country’s armed forces gain access to Micay Canyon.

But his government has struggled to contain violence in urban and rural areas as several rebel groups try to take over territory abandoned by the FARC after the peace deal.

This has made many Colombians fearful of a return to the bloody violence of the 1980s and 90s, when cartel attacks and political assassinations were frequent.

Peace talks between the FARC-EMC faction and the government broke down last year after a series of attacks on Indigenous communities.