Cambodians bristle at Korean president's now-deleted post on scam rings
A now-deleted social media post by President Lee Jae Myung about Southeast Asian phishing crime rings has stirred unease among Cambodians, who saw the phrasing as unfairly characterizing the country as a hotbed of scams. In recent months, Korean authorities and the Cambodian government have cooperated to crack down on crime rings based in Cambodia involving Koreans, as part of broader efforts to combat transnational online scam operations. The controversy centers on a message Lee posted last Friday on X, formerly Twitter, in both the Korean and Khmer languages. The post shared a Korean media report suggesting that Chinese scam rings operating in Cambodia had stopped recruiting Koreans for fear of a crackdown by Korean authorities. "Do you think my warning that those who mess with Koreans will lose everything is just empty talk?" the president wrote. "When the Republic of Korea commits, it follows through to the very end." His message, however, had the unintended effect of angering Cambodians. "The visual appearance of his tweet was diplomatically clumsy, as it did not bring about an impor
