Voice phishing losses in South Korea fell to 33.7 billion won ($24.5 million) in July, the lowest monthly figure this year, the Korean National Police Agency said on the 25th. Losses from newer scam types, such as fake investment chat rooms and "team mission" side-job schemes, also dropped 40% from a year earlier, reaching their lowest level since a special anti-fraud task force was launched.
Voice phishing cases reported from January through July totaled 7,940, down 46% from 14,707 in the same period a year earlier, according to the police. Losses over that period fell 53%, from 776.6 billion won to 361.4 billion won.
July losses of 33.7 billion won marked the lowest monthly total this year, below the 36.2 billion won recorded in February, when seasonal factors such as the Lunar New Year holiday were at play.
Newer scam types — including fake investment chat rooms, "team mission" side-job schemes, proxy-purchase fraud and romance scams — also declined. Reported cases of these newer scams numbered 1,349 in July, down 41% from 2,275 in the same month last year. Losses fell 40%, from 103.4 billion won to 62.1 billion won, the lowest level since the task force was launched.
Police said blocking measures targeting specific criminal tools — phone numbers, private signal repeaters, malicious applications, phishing sites and accounts used in crimes — are proving effective.
Working with the country's three mobile carriers, police use artificial intelligence to analyze patterns in numbers used for crimes and to block suspicious numbers in advance. Detection has been expanded to more than 20 times a day, creating what is effectively a real-time blocking system.
Police have also stepped up crackdowns on private signal repeaters. Since May, they have raided 184 repeater sites, seized 9,199 repeaters and arrested 151 people, including operators.
Emergency alerts to people at risk of falling victim to newer scams have been sharply expanded. The number of alert recipients — including those who accessed fake sites and participants in suspected investment chat rooms — rose from 767 in February to 127,026 in July.
Police identify in real time the users who communicate with malicious app control servers and those who access phishing sites, and pass the information to the relevant regional police agencies. Since the task force was launched, on-site responses and other measures have protected 33,652 people and prevented an estimated 59.3 billion won in losses, police said. In July alone, emergency alerts and 1,421 on-site responses prevented 7.7 billion won in losses.
Police are pushing for legislation, tentatively called the act on preventing mass-victim fraud using telecommunications, to establish a legal basis for prevention and blocking measures that now rely on cooperation among agencies. The bill is expected to include procedures for detecting and blocking key criminal tools — phone numbers, information and communications networks, accounts and virtual assets — before losses occur.
Hong Seok-ki, head of the National Office of Investigation, said the newer scam crimes keep changing their methods and exploiting new tools. "Discussions on enacting the anti-fraud law need to move forward quickly so that these results are not just a temporary response but are backed by the system," Hong said.
Hong also urged the public to stop communicating immediately when facing suspicious situations — such as high-return investment offers, requests to exchange proceeds, proxy purchases, mission-completion tasks or demands for money under the guise of a romantic relationship — and to first check with 112 or 1394, the main line for the telecommunications-based financial fraud task force.
