As a university student from Yecheon, North Gyeongsang, was kidnapped, tortured, and killed in Cambodia, police received a report that a man in his 30s from Sangju was also kidnapped by a crime ring in Cambodia.
According to the North Gyeongsang Provincial Police Agency on the 13th, the family of a man in his 30s, identified as A, reported to police on Aug. 22 that "they lost contact with A." A left for Cambodia on Aug. 19.
Contact with A was lost after departure. Five days later, on the 24th of the same month, he contacted his family via a video call using the mobile messenger Telegram and said, "If you send 20 million won, I can be released," after which contact was lost again.
On A's social media (SNS), a photo was also posted of A holding a notebook with the contents of an IOU written on it. A's family said they also received multiple threatening text messages with no caller ID.
Police determined that A was being threatened and extorted by an overseas crime ring. On Aug. 23, they notified the South Korean Embassy in Cambodia, the Director General for International Cooperation at the Korean National Police Agency, and the consular call center at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
This year, a total of seven reports were filed in North Gyeongsang of people who left for Cambodia and went missing, including this case and the Yecheon university student case. Of these, two cases—including one in Sangju and one in Gyeongju—remain unresolved.