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Between crisis and calm: How Cambodia became two places at once

Published: 30 Nov. 2025, 12:30 Updated: 30 Nov. 2025, 19:23

JIM BULLEY
[email protected]

A vendor walks past the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on Oct. 29. [EPA/YONHAP]

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — From the 35th floor of the Rosewood Phnom Penh, the city spreads out toward the river in a dense mix of low-rise buildings and new towers, scooters weaving through the streets below. People gather around food carts on sidewalks and tuk-tuks thread through intersections. The river bends behind the buildings, reflecting a long line of headlights.

Cambodia appears to be preparing for more visitors. Two months ago, the country opened Techo International Airport, a sprawling new terminal south of Phnom Penh designed to replace the old airport and handle far more passengers as it expands. Officials have promoted it as a “new gateway” for tourism and investment, a crucial piece of infrastructure aimed at the country’s next phase of growth.

I arrive at midnight on one of the few direct flights from Seoul, and the terminal is still brightly lit and busy. Immigration takes only a few minutes and luggage comes quickly. Outside, a landscaped parking area leads straight to waiting cars where I’m quickly whisked into the city.

In central Phnom Penh, traces of Korea are easy to find. Emart24, a convenience-store brand familiar in Seoul, now has outlets in the city. Korean banks have a visible presence, including a Woori Bank billboard across the road from the Royal Palace. Local shops add hangul to their signs to catch the eye of Korean-speaking customers. Down by the riverfront, a giant Bacchus can advertises a Korean energy drink to anyone walking past.

A large Woori Bank billboard is visible in front of the royal palace in downtown Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on Nov. 20. [JIM BULLEY]

In 7-Eleven, there are plenty of Choco Pie and Shin Ramyun options, while at Lucky Supermarket in Exchange Square, one wall is given over to soju and makgeolli. On the streets outside, secondhand Korean cars move with the traffic, some still bearing the hangul lettering that once advertised cram schools and small businesses over 2,000 miles away.

None of this is unusual to Cambodians. For years, Korean tourists and investors have been part of the background to Phnom Penh’s growth.

But at the moment, the signs of Korea are all here, but not the people.

In four days in central Phnom Penh, Korean brands and Korean letters are everywhere, but Korean tourists are not. There are no snatches of Korean conversation on the street and no clusters of golfers at the hotel breakfast buffet. On one recent flight from Incheon to Phnom Penh, there were fewer than 20 Korean passport holders on a full plane.

For somebody who has lived in Korea for over a decade and sees Korean tourists wherever they go, the silence is deafening. This might be the furthest I’ve been from a Korean speaker in 20 years.

A surge of abductions

Over the past four months, Korea has been shaken by a steady stream of reports about citizens trapped in online scam operations across Southeast Asia. Cambodia has become the focal point of that coverage.

The cases follow a basic pattern, according to officials and international investigators: False job offers advertised online, promising high pay for office work abroad. When recruits arrive, their passports are taken and they are confined in guarded compounds, forced to operate fraud schemes targeting victims around the world. Those who resist can face beatings or worse.

Suspects are seen with their hands zip-tied after being detained during a police raid on a scam center in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on July 16. [EPA/YONHAP]

Authorities last month said over 500 Koreans had been kidnapped in Cambodia this year, over 200 of whom are yet to return home.

The death that triggered widespread anger in Korea involved a 22-year-old university student who traveled to Cambodia after being recruited through a job advertisement. He was later found dead in southern Cambodia, bearing signs of torture. Authorities in both countries have linked the case to an online scam operation.

Although there has been no evidence to suggest there is any risk to tourists, the Korean government issued the highest-level travel ban for parts of Cambodia in mid-October. The restrictions cover areas such as Bokor Mountain, the border city of Poipet and the town of Bavet, identified by officials as hubs for organized crime and scam compounds. Under Korean law, citizens entering those areas — even voluntarily — can face penalties.

The rest of the country is still covered by heightened travel restrictions. Visiting Phnom Penh is not recommended for anything but essential travel, and Koreans traveling there may have to justify it at the border.

At the same time, Korea has dispatched a senior diplomatic team to Phnom Penh to work with Cambodian authorities on locating missing citizens, arranging releases and pressing for arrests. Officials have said repatriated Koreans may be treated either as victims or suspects depending on whether they participated in fraud, a position that further amplifies the confusion surrounding the story.

Korean police escort Korean detainees to a plane at Techo International Airport, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on Oct. 18. [EPA/YONHAP]

In that atmosphere, “Cambodia” has become shorthand in Korean media for kidnapping and exploitation. Headlines have been dominated by missing-person cases, ransom demands, claims of physical abuse and fears that authorities in both countries failed to act quickly enough. The narrative has spilled beyond the criminal cases themselves and seems likely to influence how Koreans view travel to the region for years to come.

International gangs, Cambodian fallout

In Phnom Penh, Cambodians seem to be aware of the tragedy but confused by the fallout. Cambodian officials have met Korean delegations, spoken publicly about arrests and acknowledged the reputational damage. Cambodia’s credibility as a safe destination is not only a foreign-policy matter; it affects restaurants, hotels, tour operators and investment campaigns.

The newly-built Techo International Airport in Kandal province, on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on Oct. 20. [AFP/YONHAP]

The Cambodians I spoke to were upset about what has happened to the Korean victims, but also feel that Cambodia is a victim as well.

“The situation is extremely bad,” a tuk-tuk driver who asked not to be named told me in Phnom Penh on Nov. 22. “But you have to understand, it’s not a Cambodia issue. The gangs must have Cambodians, yes, but there are also Koreans and the leaders are Chinese.

“But now people think Cambodia is evil.”

The idea that the gangs operating the scam centers in Cambodia are mainly Chinese is widely accepted — both Reuters and AFP have reported that the overseers tend to be “ethnic Chinese organized-crime bosses” — although Cambodian authorities have been accused of turning a blind eye to crimes that have allowed the gangs to flourish.

Amnesty International earlier this year accused the Cambodian government of “deliberately ignoring a litany of human rights abuses including slavery, human trafficking, child labor and torture” carried out by “Chinese criminal gangs.”

Whether the Amnesty International allegations are true or not is irrelevant to the tourist experience in Cambodia, insists Mr. Kong, who runs a weekend food stall, by the river and was only willing to share his surname.

“Two things are not related,” Kong said on Nov. 22. “Millions of tourists are here from every country. This is not a dangerous place to travel.”

Kong is not wrong about the numbers. According to the Cambodian Ministry of Tourism, 6.7 million international tourists visited the country in 2024, over a million of them arriving in Phnom Penh.

A street in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on Nov. 26. [EPA/YONHAP]

The crowds are easy to find. Tourist sites in Phnom Penh are busy. The National Museum, nearby temples, Tuol Sleng and the killing fields are crowded with foreign visitors using audio guides in multiple languages. Staff hand out maps and sell tickets as quickly as they can. There are Korean translations available at every stop, but no obvious evidence of anybody picking them up.

Tourists undeterred

On the streets around the Rosewood and along the riverfront, the scam-center crisis is largely invisible. In the evening, families sit on the low wall facing the Tonle Sap and Mekong rivers, eating snacks and watching the water. Food stalls like Kong’s do steady business, especially on the weekends when the area is pedestrianized and tens of thousands of Cambodians and tourists flock to the popular “Walking Street.”

A huge replica of a can of Korean energy drink Bacchus rises above the Walking Street crowds in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on Nov. 22. [JIM BULLEY]

On the evening of Nov. 22, former professional golfers from the PGA and European tours in town for a nearby Legends golf tournament take turns trying to chip balls from the bank onto a barge in the middle of the river.

There is no evidence here of a city or country in crisis. There are risks in Phnom Penh and Siem Riep as there are in any big city, but there appears to be no indication that the dangers to tourists go beyond that.

The seven-year-old Rosewood Phnom Penh is a five-star luxury hotel, offering a very high standard of accommodation for prices well below what you might pay for a similar level of service in other parts of the world. It’s owner, Cambodia’s Vattanac Group, also owns the nearby Vattanac Golf Resort.

Designed by Sir Nick Faldo, the Vattanac Golf Resort is home to what was named the World’s Best 9 Hole Golf Course in 2021 and last week hosted the Legends tournament, the first international professional golf tournament to take place in the country.

The five-star hotel, the golf course designed by one of the greatest players of all time, the warm weather and the cheap prices should make Cambodia exactly the sort of destination that Korean tourists heading to Southeast Asia are looking for when the weather turns too cold at home.

But the legions of Korean golfers that fly south every winter will this year be headed to Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia. For the vast majority, Cambodia will simply no longer feel like an option.

BY JIM BULLEY [[email protected]]