SEOUL: A Chinese alleged cybercrime ringleader, whose victims reportedly included BTS megastar Jungkook, was extradited from Thailand to South Korea on Wednesday (May 13) over a hacking scheme that stole more than US$25 million, Seoul’s justice ministry said.<\/p>\n
The 40-year-old suspect is accused of leading a hacking organisation based overseas, including in Thailand, that infiltrated websites of budget mobile carriers and other firms between August 2023 and April 2025, according to the ministry’s statement.<\/p>\n
The suspect was arrested in Bangkok in an Interpol-led operation and flown to South Korea’s Incheon airport Wednesday in cooperation with Seoul’s National Police Agency, it said.<\/p>\n
Using illegally obtained personal data, the group allegedly accessed victims’ financial and cryptocurrency accounts and withdrew large sums without authorisation.<\/p>\n
Victims reportedly included celebrities, conglomerate chairmen and startup executives, with South Korean reports saying K-pop star Jungkook was among those targeted.<\/p>\n
Jungkook reportedly had his securities account identity stolen and shares in HYBE – BTS’s agency – worth 8.4 billion won (US$5.6 million) taken, but avoided financial losses after immediate payment suspension measures were put in place, according to the Kyunghyang Shinmun daily.<\/p>\n
An alleged accomplice, a 36-year-old Chinese national arrested in Thailand in May 2025, was extradited to South Korea in August and indicted the following month. His trial is ongoing.<\/p>\n
South Korean prosecutors and investigators were also sent to Thailand in July 2025 to meet Thai police and prosecutors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SEOUL: A Chinese alleged cybercrime ringleader, whose victims reportedly included BTS megastar Jungkook, was extradited from Thailand to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15289,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[134,1105,31,33],"class_list":["post-15288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-south-korea","tag-china","tag-hacking","tag-korea","tag-south-korea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}