About 11,000 illegal gambling-style internet cafes and game arcades operate across South Korea, but only 24 staff support crackdowns on them, according to data obtained by Seoul Economic Daily. Repeat violations by venues that breach facility standards are also frequent, prompting calls for a system to manage them with dedicated expertise.
Data from the Game Rating and Administration Committee, obtained on the 3rd through the office of Rep. Lim O-kyeong of the Democratic Party of Korea, showed that as of August this year the country had roughly 11,000 illegal gambling-style internet cafes and game-providing businesses. Yet the staff supporting enforcement against them numbered only 24. Seven of the 24, or 29.2%, are fixed-term workers, making continuous enforcement support impossible.
The problem is that illegal game-providing venues keep evolving, ranging from so-called "game-tels" — lodging facilities converted to offer game services — to organized illegal adult internet cafes.
In April, the Ulsan Metropolitan Police Agency arrested 15 people, including a ringleader who ran servers and a call center in Vietnam that gave access to 2,133 adult internet cafes in South Korea, and detained nine of them. A court approved the pre-indictment confiscation and preservation of about 2.7 billion won ($1.9 million) in criminal proceeds.
The Daegu Metropolitan Police Agency recently arrested the head of the headquarters of a large franchise arcade chain who led the promotion of gambling-style play by manipulating the grip strength of crane game machines and offering expensive prizes. Police found that the company ran 50 directly operated stores nationwide and generated annual revenue of about 100 billion won ($70 million).
As illegal game operations grow more sophisticated nationwide, demand for enforcement is rising. The committee said on-site enforcement support for illegal gambling-style internet cafes totaled 248 cases in the first half of this year, up 24% from a year earlier. Appraisal and enforcement support for illegal game products over the same period rose 18.9% to 1,220 cases.
Police have also stepped up their response. The committee held 54 enforcement training sessions for 1,049 police officers in the first half of this year. Police also conducted a three-week intensive crackdown on illegal adult internet cafes from Aug. 24 to Sept. 11, uncovering 387 cases, a 22% increase from a year earlier.
Still, the industry's chronic problems are seen as the shortage of enforcement staff and the lack of proper follow-up after crackdowns. When the committee re-inspected venues that had violated facility standards, it found fresh violations at 109 of them. Calls have persisted for a management system that continuously tracks whether cited venues violate rules again and strengthens follow-up inspections of repeat offenders.
"There are only 24 enforcement support staff responding to about 11,000 illegal gambling-style internet cafes and game-providing businesses, and re-inspections of venues that violated facility standards confirmed repeat violations at 109 of them," Lim said. "Performance should not be measured only by how many cases were caught. We need to expand the number of on-site specialists and build a follow-up system that continuously tracks repeat violations by cited venues."
