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Comment by b0afc375b5 | Hacker News Reader

> After several months of being paid normally for normal work, they're invited to a team-building event in SE Asia

Holy ####. This reminds me of my previous software developer job when we were supposed to go to South Korea for God knows what[0]. The reason why we had to go there wasn't really explained well to me, and I didn't care enough to ask because I was just excited to go to another country. In the end our application was denied by the embassy, and I always felt a bit disappointed by that.

Perhaps the possibility of my case being sinister is miniscule, but maybe I shouldn't feel too disappointed.

[0] the owner of the company I worked for was South Korean

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I don't think that South Korea would fall into this category, its pretty well developed and western-style democracy (with some strong nepotic powers at place but ultimately even they are not untouchable).

If you would be invited to say Philippines, Indonesia (which covers Bali too), Myanmar, Laos etc. that should raise an eyebrow.

just because someone says you are being taken to a particular place doesnt mean thats where you will end up.

Yeah, but if you're a westerner being taken on a trip to South Korea, read your plane ticket to see if that's actually were you're going.

If the deal is more akin to "get in this van and my guy will take you to where you need to go", then that's another story.

once your in the air you are effectively detained.

a large number of situations, contrived or otherwise, can result in emergency diversions.

you may want to be sure a connecting flight is legitimate when travelling in 'suspect' regions.

this would be high profile kidnapping, but a source of non SEA persons, that would be more convincing, and a source of international ransom revenues, espescially if they were also accused of some crime.

An airliner being diverted for a kidnapping might happen if a country were trying to nab you, but that isn't a realistic scenario for a criminal gang to orchestrate.

> get in this van and my guy will take you to where you need to go

That could have been their pickup from the airport.

Well South Korean is a peninsula, effectively an island, so you're probably fairly safe there if you don't agree to get on somebody's boat or plane. Accepting a plane ticket to a country like South Korea just isn't very risky. Where you might get into trouble is accepting somebody's invitation to smuggle you across a border, or being taken to a country where the rule of law is in doubt or where you could be driven across a border into such a country.

That's not how international travel works until you totally leave civilization; no matter who's paying for the trip, you do know where you're going, and each individual has a choice at every border crossing; they can't simply "export" a box filled with people on a plane that's going "somewhere".

Thats only if they play by the rules and everyone is honest and unfettered by coercion.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37327558

So with zero substantiation from the OP (who admitted this), you believe this explanation and you've now connected it to some company trip to South Korea you once didn't go on?

It's pretty hard simplification for the matter.

There is only 2 airports where this sort of things happen. If your teambuilding event scheduled to be in some god forbidden area of Colombia for example, and if this doesn't bring any suspicion to you - well...

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