The Korean National Police Agency said on Feb. 4 that it held talks in Seoul between Malaysia's Mohd Khalid bin Ismail and the heads of public security of both countries and signed a "memorandum of understanding (MOU) on public security cooperation to respond to transnational crime."
Under the memorandum, the two countries will quickly share information on transnational crimes such as scam compounds and carry out joint operations. In particular, they specified the scope of concrete cooperation, including the arrest and repatriation of fugitives and the freezing and recovery of criminal revenue.
Based on last year, Korea's losses from voice phishing were about 1 trillion won. Malaysia also suffered 277 million ringgit (about 830 billion won) in losses from online and financial scams.
Acting Commissioner Yu Jae-seong of the Korean National Police Agency and Ismail agreed that as online scam damage emerges as a national threat, a cross-border cooperation framework is important to eradicate it.
Accordingly, Yu, the acting chief, also asked Malaysia to join the "international cooperation council" launched last year. The Korean National Police Agency, taking the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference it hosted in Oct. last year as an opportunity, launched an international cooperation council with participating countries and is expanding a multilateral cooperation network for joint responses to scam crimes.
Ismail said, "Including joining the council, we will hold in-depth discussions to review multifaceted cooperation measures that will allow the two countries to jointly confront new types of cybercrime going forward."