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Sam Beltran

The Philippines spent years dismantling Chinese-linked gambling compounds in dramatic, headline-grabbing raids.
But all the while, and with far less scrutiny, South Korean syndicates were building a parallel industry worth billions of US dollars – one that a spate of recent arrests suggests is still very much intact.
The most recent involved a 29-year-old Korean woman named Kim Young-sun, who authorities allege ran a network of 23 illegal online betting websites out of offices in Pasay and Quezon City that raked in an estimated 5.33 trillion won (US$3.8 billion) between November 2018 and this year.
Her arrest, announced on Monday, offered a rare glimpse into an underworld that has apparently thrived for years in the shadow of the much louder scandal surrounding Chinese-linked Philippine offshore gaming operators, or Pogos.
For almost a decade, Pogos dominated the headlines. Compounds linked to Chinese syndicates were exposed for human trafficking, torture and fraud on a scale so shocking it triggered a congressional inquiry, presidential intervention and, eventually, a permanent ban.
But while investigators trained their attention on those operations, an analogous Korean criminal economy was expanding largely unnoticed. Kim’s arrest and a related case unsealed by police in Seoul just weeks earlier suggest this economy had grown far larger than most realised.

The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency disclosed on August 12 that it had uncovered an illegal gambling operation using websites featuring child sexual abuse material to lure users to betting sites.
The syndicate behind it, traced to Pasay City and active from August 2019 until earlier this month, generated an estimated 47.6 billion won in revenue, while affiliated betting sites handled some 4.7 trillion won in wagers.
Two suspects, one already the subject of an Interpol Red Notice, were arrested and referred to prosecutors for alleged violations of child-protection and anti-pornography laws.
Taken together, the arrests sketch the outline of an industry hiding in plain sight: sophisticated, long-running and largely untouched by the Philippines’ anti-Pogo enforcement drive.
Hidden in plain sight
“The Chinese were sticking out like sore thumbs,” said Winston Casio, who until December served as a deputy director of Manila’s Presidential Anti-Organised Crime Commission (PAOCC).
“There were low-hanging fruits to be plucked … that worked to the Koreans’ advantage.”
Pogos – the formerly legally licensed offshore gambling firms that multiplied under former president Rodrigo Duterte – became the public face of the issue after President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr shut them down in 2024, citing links to organised crime, trafficking, fraud and money laundering. Lawmakers made the ban permanent a year later.
The accompanying raids were harrowing. PAOCC-led operations in 2023 and 2024 unearthed evidence of torture chambers and human trafficking inside Pogo compounds that fuelled investigations – including into former town mayor Alice Guo, who was sentenced to life in prison in November for her role in setting up a scam centre in Bamban, Tarlac province.


Meanwhile, Korean networks barely registered: PAOCC managed just three raids on operations linked to South Korean nationals between 2023 and last year.
Chinese and South Korean syndicates operated in similar ways, but had different specialisms, Casio said, with Korean operations tending to focus on rigged betting websites.
“They hide behind the veneer of legitimate ball games – for example, during the World Cup, Euro Cup or the NBA Finals, but the games are pre-recorded or rigged … unlike the Chinese where the scams were rooted in investment and pig-butchering scams,” he told This Week in Asia.
Korean crime networks in Southeast Asia do not operate as an extension of the region’s more deeply embedded Chinese triads, yet they are far from strangers, according to experts.
“Korean gangsters called jopok or kangpae have been running independently from triads for years, although they do work together in Southeast Asia when it’s helpful or they need to source drugs, launder money or run scams,” said Jeremy Douglas, deputy director of operations at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. “Gaming and scams are no different.”
Bora Park, a research fellow at the Institute for National Security Strategy in Seoul, went further, suggesting that many Korean gambling rings in the Philippines had “close ties to China from the very beginning”, often forming part of multinational operations rather than being composed solely of Korean nationals.

Predating Pogos
Analysts who spoke to This Week in Asia said Korean-linked illicit gambling operations predated the Chinese-run Pogos that multiplied to more than 300 licensed firms at their peak.
Criminal groups began migrating to the Philippines in the 2000s alongside legitimate investors, entrepreneurs and other members of the Korean diaspora, Douglas said.
Casio added that many Korean-linked operations were remnants of once-legitimate businesses that benefited from infrastructure and networks established years earlier.
Alexander Ramos, former executive director of the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Centre in the Philippines, dates the sector’s origins to the mid-2000s, when he said Korean operators ran legitimate gambling businesses within special economic zones before some splintered off into illegal operations.
Song Bong-gyu, an assistant professor at Hansei University who has tracked Korean organised crime since 2007, said the appeal of the Philippines was obvious from the start.
“Establishing operations overseas made it possible to distance themselves from Korean law enforcement while continuing to target customers in South Korea,” Song said, adding that illegal gambling operations targeting Korean nationals were already running out of the Philippines by 2014.

When the Pogo boom arrived under Duterte, it gave Korean syndicates new infrastructure to plug into. Pre-existing networks converged with Pogo-era offices, staff and payment systems, before later scattering again into smaller, harder to trace units, according to Song.
“Over time, the Philippines developed personnel, technological expertise, office and residential facilities, telecommunications infrastructure, payment channels and local intermediaries that could support offshore online gambling operations,” he said.
“Large compounds may disappear, but criminal operations can become smaller, more dispersed and less visible, while the networks connecting them remain extensive.”
The ‘balloon effect’
For her part, Park expressed scepticism that Korean organised crime was independently colonising Southeast Asia.
She argued it was far more likely that Korean operators had simply plugged into existing local or Chinese-affiliated networks that were already active in the region.
After the Philippines’ Pogo ban took hold in early 2025, Park said many Chinese-linked groups initially retreated to neighbouring countries or even to China – only for some to then move back again.

Cho Je-seong, a research fellow at the Korean Institute of Criminology and Justice, has a name for this pattern: the “balloon effect”, in which enforcement pressures squeeze criminal activity into new shapes rather than eliminating it.
“There can also be an organisational dimension to this process, in which a larger organisation becomes fragmented into several smaller groups or networks as enforcement pressure increases,” he said.
Even small cells would often run several gambling websites at the same time, Cho said, with dedicated teams for illegal bank accounts, recruitment, site maintenance and money laundering.
Last year’s passage of the law formally criminalising Pogos, building on Marcos’ executive order a year earlier, had lulled the Philippine public into a false sense of security, Casio said.
“Because of the anti-Pogo law, people think that the Pogo problem is already gone from the Philippines,” he said. Kim Young-sun’s arrest suggests otherwise.


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The Philippines

How the Philippines missed a Korean gambling racket worth US$3.8 billion

Security officers stand guard outside a closed Pogo compound in Cavite province, the Philippines, in 2024. Photo: EPA-EFE

Kim Young-sun is accused of running a network of 23 illegal online betting websites in the Philippines. Photo: Handout

Medical equipment found during a raid on a Pogo-linked underground medical facility in Pasay City, the Philippines, in 2024. Photo: PAOCC/Handout

Police officers escort South Korean scam suspects repatriated from Cambodia at Incheon International Airport in January. Photo: Reuters

A Philippine police officer inspects a building at a closed Pogo hub in Kawit, Cavite province, in 2024. Photo: AFP

Philippine peso banknotes on a pile of playing cards.  Korean-linked illicit gambling operations in the Philippines predate Chinese-run Pogos, observers say. Photo: Shutterstock

Philippine Interior Secretary Juanito Remulla places a closure sign on a former Pogo hub in Cavite province in 2024. Photo: AFP

Asia faces scam ‘epidemic’ threat as gangs exploit agentic AI, cybercrime expert warns

Losses from transnational online scams in Asia-Pacific surged to US$114 billion last year. Photo; Shutterstock

Computer monitors at a compound in O’Smach, a town in Cambodia, that the Thai military said in December was used for scam operations. Photo: Reuters

Southeast Asia’s multibillion-dollar scam industry refuses to die: ‘everyone gets a cut’

A woman counts US dollars and Japanese yen banknotes in Phnom Penh. Scam money’s reach extends far beyond the Mekong. Photo: AFP

A convoy of Lamborghinis leaves Bangkok en route to Pattaya. Scam proceeds wash up in the pool villas of Bangkok, the restaurants of Phnom Penh and the supercars of Vientiane. Photo: AFP

A photo circulated on social media in December, and reportedly taken in 2014, shows current Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul (right) with a group of people including South African national “Ben Smith” (third from left). Photo: Facebook/sorrayuth9115

A satellite photo shows the KK Park complex in Myanmar’s eastern Myawaddy township in September before a recent crackdown. The border town opposite Thailand is a notorious cybercrime hub. Photo: Planet Labs PBC / AFP

Scam centre workers and victims sit next to dismantled IT equipment during a crackdown on a scam operation in Shwe Kokko, Myawaddy township, in February. Photo: AFP

Can Philippines’ new anti-Pogo playbook rein in fast-moving scam hubs?

A closed Philippine online gaming operator (Pogo) hub inside the former Island Cove resort in Kawit, Cavite province in December 2024. Photo: AFP

The new anti-Pogo rules set out how Philippine law enforcement agencies should gather intelligence, process digital evidence, handle victims and suspects, preserve assets and pursue prosecutions. Photo: Shutterstock

Workers sit at their desks during a raid by the Philippines’ Presidential Anti-Organised Crime Commission and National Bureau of Investigation at an office of a suspected online scam farm in Manila in January 2025. Photo: AFP

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Recent arrests expose a long-running crime network that flourished in the shadow of the nation’s Pogo scandal


Recent arrests expose a long-running crime network that flourished in the shadow of the nation’s Pogo scandal.


How the Philippines missed a Korean gambling racket worth US$3.8 billion

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Recent arrests expose a long-running crime network that flourished in the shadow of the nation’s Pogo scandal

Recent arrests expose a long-running crime network that flourished in the shadow of the nation’s Pogo scandal