Korea to cool lottery fever

The government said on Friday it is considering setting a limit on the total number of lottery tickets issued in a bid to cool red-hot lottery fever.

The Korea Lottery Commission, an agency under the Ministry of Strategy and Finance, raised the lottery ticket issuance limit for this year to 2.8 trillion won ($2.5 billion) on Thursday, up from 2.5 trillion won, to meet the surging demand.

The Finance Ministry is now trying to stem the lottery boom from heating up further after the launch of a pension-style lottery.

Last week, a total of 120 billion won worth of lottery tickets was sold, more than double the average weekly sales. The total sales of lottery tickets has already reached 2.1 trillion won this year, and is forecast to top 3 trillion won by year-end.

The Finance Ministry said the lottery commission would refrain from promoting lottery sales through marketing activities as much as possible, and the ministry would control the lottery issuance tightly next year.

(insight@heraldcorp.com)