Over 1,000 Korean children arrested for online gambling, some operating gambling sites
By Ramona Depares
If there’s one thing that can be definitely said for the top online casinos, it’s that there’s no way that any underaged gambling is going to be tolerated. Unfortunately, this cannot be said of some unscrupulous gambling sites that don’t operate within the standards required of a gambling license and that don’t need to worry about best practices and industry reputation.
This is exactly what happened in South Korea when more than 1,000 children were busted while gambling online. Korean media house YaniSafak.com reported that the youngest of these was just 9 years old and that many of the youngsters have had to be sent for counselling.
The story helps underscore the need for online casinos that are regulated and that subscribe to responsible gambling policies, as such sites have all the safeguards in place to make underaged gambling almost impossible.
What will happen to the children?
According to press reports, the children were discovered as part of a bigger police drive to crack down on illegal online casinos and betting. Some 3,000 people were discovered to be making use of unauthorized gambling sites, with 1035 of these found to be underage. The police have already arrested 75 of the adult gamblers apprehended.
However, it remains unclear what exactly will happen to the 1035 underaged gamblers. Around 700 of them have been sent to counselling centres. The Yonhap News Agency detailed how the investigation into the illegal gambling ring took more than 6 months and resulted in around $45 million in illegal winnings being seized.
The vast majority of underage gamblers were high school students, while there were 228 children attending middle school and another 7 in University. The biggest shock was the discovery of two elementary schoolers. The youngest, aged 9, had been found to have bet the equivalent of around $4,000.
Even more worryingly, some 12 teenagers are being accused of actually running illegal online casinos. Around 41.9 % of the children and young teens found to have been gambling online said they were placing bets on baccarat tables.
Sporting bets appeared to be the second most popular with 19.8% of bets, while casino games ranked at 17.1% and slots at 14.7%. The police investigation revealed more than 1,000 financial accounts held under the names of adolescents were being used to manage gambling funds.
South Korean police are expected to kick off another intensive crackdown later this month, to continue targeting harmful online content and to prevent the proliferation of gambling-related crimes.
Head of the National Office of Investigation Woo Jong-soo said: “Given the concerns of youth gambling, we will rigorously enforce the law against both gamblers and operators of gambling sites.” However, while the adults involved will certainly be facing legal proceedings and are already being kept in custody, South Korean police so far have limited themselves to sending the children to a specialized counselling centre.
Prior to doing this, they obtained both the children’s and the legal guardians’ consent for this. However, all the winnings obtained from the illegal online casinos were taken away from them.
The problem of underage illegal gambling is a long-standing one in South Korea. In November 2023, news agency Yonhap reported how many teens were trying to “piece together their lives” after suffering a gambling addiction.
The preferred legal action so far has always been that of counselling, with one of the affected children telling the same news agency that it was his teacher who originally figured out that there was a problem. As a result, the youngster was asked to join a group of teenagers who were facing similar problems at the National Center for Youth Internet Addiction Treatment, which is located in Muju, 190 kilometres away from the capital of Seoul.
The centre specializes in providing mental counselling and getting young people’s minds off betting and was opened in 2014 after being repurposed from an old school. In its early days, it was focused on treating teenagers who had grown overly dependent on smartphones and on internet use. It was only in 2023 that a pilot program was launched for students addicted to gambling at online casinos.
Each child attends a two-week program that includes one-on-one and group counselling sessions, sports and music clubs, and financial awareness classes that aim to deter and treat gambling addiction. Bae Young-tae, the head of the centre, revealed to the media that the programs focus heavily on offering “alternative activities” that teens and children can enjoy without needing their smartphones. These include learning how to play an instrument, reading and teaching them other hobbies.
Because the problem of gambling arises online, South Korean authorities believe that teaching young people how to exercise self-control over their electronic devices is the key to the problem, as this over-dependence is the one common element that those facing a gambling addiction have.
However, the government has faced criticism for not doing enough for those children who are caught carrying out problem gambling. Lee Hae-kook, a professor of medicine at the Catholic University of Korea, is one of these. He claims that these teens need to be linked to psychiatric health institutions that will “completely intervene in the process to support their struggles with gambling”. The professor, who has created a counselling manual to treat teens facing gambling problems, added that “running a treatment camp” is far from being enough.
Youth cyber gambling soars in South Korea
South Korea has seen a sharp increase in problem gambling among children and young people in recent years, as well as illegal gambling in general. To put things into perspective, in 2015 there were 51 youngsters receiving treatment at the National Center for Youth Internet Addiction Treatment. By 2023, that number had increased by 28 times, with 1400 youngsters being referred to the centre according to the Korea Problem Gambling Agency.
A study by the Korean Institute of Criminology and Justice (KICJ) revealed in 2023 that illegal online gambling has grown more sophisticated and widespread since the pandemic. Between 2018 and 2023, the South Korean illegal gambling market experienced a growth of 91%, expanding to what the study described as an “uncontrollable level”.
The same study called for the government to review its approach to youth-focused illegal gambling regulations and prevention policies. Figures revealed that at least 40% of adults involved in illegal gambling used to belong to the group at risk for gambling addiction in their adolescence, which is a clear indication that government policies are not working.
The source of the problem appears to be the fact that it’s ridiculously easy for an underage child to open an account at an illegal online casino. The registration process for such sites only requires a bank account under the player’s name – no age or identity checks are carried out. Young children are lured to these sites by word-of-mouth invitations and direct messages on their smartphones as well as online and social media advertising.
A survey conducted in May 2023 among 880,000 middle school first graders and high school freshmen resulted in nearly 29,000 students being found to be at risk of online gambling, according to the South Korean gender ministry.
Will regulated online casinos provide the answer for South Korea?
Incidents like these have prompted authorities to look at the European and North American models, where the emphasis is on creating a legal infrastructure as experience has shown that players are more likely to choose the top online casinos that offer safety and security, rather than their illegal counterparts.
In fact, the KICJ study recommended the promotion of the legal online casino industry as the best strategy that could buck the trend of underaged gambling. Whether the government will follow this advice remains to be seen.