SEOUL, April 29 — The South Korean and Cambodian police have agreed to expand the scope of their joint investigation to include drug and online gambling crimes, said Seoul's National Police Agency (NPA).
Yonhap News Agency reported that acting NPA chief Yoo Jae-seong and his Cambodian counterpart Sar Thet reached an agreement on a Cambodia-based joint investigation team during talks in Seoul as part of efforts to root out transnational crime involving South Koreans.
The Cambodian-Korean Joint Task Force for Koreans was launched late last year to tackle scam crimes involving Korean nationals in the Southeast Asian country in response to the torture death of a Korean college student earlier that year.
The student had been lured into Cambodia in an employment scam, sparking widespread public outrage in South Korea.
Since its launch, the joint team has apprehended 166 scam suspects in the Southeast Asian nation and rescued five South Korean nationals who were detained in scam centres there.
The NPA has also decided to launch an official development assistance project worth ₩18 billion (RM47.86 million) with the Korea International Cooperation Agency to help boost the Cambodian police's crime scene investigation capabilities.
