The Board of Audit and Inspection said Thursday that the Foreign Ministry failed to raise its Cambodia travel alert in time even as job-scam and confinement cases mounted, missing a chance to prevent harm.
According to News1 and OBS, the Board of Audit and Inspection released on Thursday the results of its audit of overseas missions and the protection of Koreans abroad. The core finding is that job scams, confinement and abductions of Koreans in Cambodia continued while the Foreign Ministry did not raise its travel alert in time, so opportunities to avoid harm were missed. The board blamed complacent awareness of the situation and passive handling of duties.
광고 문의 · 300×250The Kyunghyang Shinmun reported that the board said the ministry judged the Cambodian job scams not to be a national crisis and did not raise the alert despite repeated recommendations from the local embassy. The paper headlined this as the recommendations being ignored. That word, however, is the newspaper's own, and whether the audit report itself used it has not been confirmed.
How slow the alert changes were
OBS reported that of 54 ad hoc travel-alert adjustments over the past three years, 7 (13%) took 15 days or longer and 9 (16.7%) took 30 days or longer. The board reportedly saw such delays as recurring and demanded improvement. The number and timing of the embassy's recommendations and details of the ministry's internal review do not appear in the reports this newspaper checked, and so are unconfirmed.
News1 reported that the board requested light disciplinary action against three ministry officials at director and division-head level. The same report put the number of victims of job scams and similar crimes over the past three years at 741. Outlets describe the period covered differently, so further confirmation is needed.
Last year's crisis and the ministry's stance
Harm to Koreans in Cambodia shocked the public last October, including the death of a university student, and the ministry issued a travel ban for some areas. Foreign Minister Cho Hyun apologized at the National Assembly audit then, saying the approach had fundamental limits. The new audit result looks back at that episode after the fact.
The ministry told News1 that it will improve safety information and add consular staff as part of measures to prevent a recurrence. Whether it offered a specific rebuttal to the audit findings has not been confirmed. Some observers add that overseas job scams involve local criminal syndicates and recruitment channels, so whether a higher alert alone would have stopped every case is a separate question.