Less than 1% of illegal lottery websites blocked this year

Over 2,000 websites running illegal lotteries were reported to authorities this year, but only 0.9 percent of them have been blocked by the government, Ministry of Economy and Finance data showed Tuesday.

Of the 2,838 websites reported, only 26 had blocked as of July, according to ministry data submitted to Rep. Jung Sung-ho of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea. Most of the reported cases -- 2,666 -- were still under deliberation by the Korea Communications Standards Commission.

The delay is thought to be due to the time the commission takes to reach a decision on a report, which averages over three months.

It was revealed that from June 2020 to February of this year, the KCSC took an average of 96.7 days to reach a decision on each case.

The actual percentage of illegal lottery websites that were blocked was about 39 percent, as authorities decided to block the website in 7,897 of the 20,266 cases it deliberated on from 2019 to July of this year. This percentage is expected to go higher by year-end, as most of the cases reported so far this year are still under consideration.

South Korea's Lottery Tickets and Lottery Fund Act states that only those who have been entrusted by the Korea Lottery Commission can issue lottery tickets. But there have been a number of illegal lotteries taking place online, which the KCSC and the state's lottery authorities are charged with monitoring.