By Lee Hae-rin

Following comedian Lee Jin-ho’s confession to illegal online gambling, reports of such activities have nearly tripled over the past four years, according to government data released Wednesday.

Since beginning gambling on an illegal site in 2020, Lee, 38, has borrowed a total of 1 billion won ($733,929) from fellow entertainers including BTS’ Jimin, and over 1.3 billion won from money lenders.

Meanwhile, even teenagers are becoming exposed to the dangers of illegal online gambling here.

A 17-year-old first encountered gambling as a middle school student two years ago when he saw his friends gambling.

He began gambling for fun but soon found himself over 16 million won in debt. His parents paid off the debt instead, but the 17-year-old gradually moved away from school, developing symptoms of anxiety and depression, and eventually dropping out of high school.

According to data submitted by the National Gambling Control Commission to the office of Rep. Min Hyung-bae of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea, a total of 39,082 cases of illegal online gambling were reported last year, which is a three-fold increase from the 13,064 cases in 2019.

During the same period, the surveillance of illegal gambling industry activities also tripled from 16,662 to 48,648, and illegal online gambling reports accounted for 80.3 percent of all surveillance activities last year.

By August this year, 32,309 illegal gambling activities were reported, including 11,962 illegal cases of sports gambling, 17,733 illegal casinos and 9,507 illegal online gambling sites.

Banners for illegal online gambling / Screenshot from Internet

Statistics indicate that illegal gambling has surpassed 100 trillion won over the past five years.

According to the commission’s report released last October, the amount of illegal gambling reached 102.7 trillion won.

This is a 26 percent increase from the 2019 estimate, which stood at 81.5 trillion won. During the same period, more than 100,000 people received gambling addiction treatment services, 7,880 of whom were teenagers.

Notably, the number of adolescent gambling offenders and addicts has also increased.

According to the National Police Agency, as of August this year, 328 juvenile offenders, aged between 14 and 19, were criminally charged with illegal gambling allegations, which is up 5.6 times from the 59 recorded in 2015.

The number of juvenile offenders under the age of 14 rose to 45 this year, marking a 15-fold increase from just three in 2021, when records began.

The Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service reports that the number of gambling addicts among adolescents under 19 reached 181 this year, more than six times the 27 recorded in 2015.

This year, the number of adolescents receiving treatment and counseling for gambling addiction through the Korea Gambling Problem Prevention and Healing Center reached 2,665, a 4.6-fold increase from 503 in 2017.

Jo Ho-yeon, head of the civic group Gambling-Free School, which campaigns to eliminate illegal online gambling among youth, argues that Korea has failed to investigate the underlying causes of the spread of illegal online gambling.

“For the past 20 years, the government has been consistently talking about ‘prevention and healing’ as a countermeasure against illegal gambling, but at the core of the problem lies the government’s incompetence, irresponsibility and indifference,” he said.

“It is a big problem (but) we do not intend to solve fundamental problems and only discuss prevention and healing, which leads to massive budget consumption,” Jo said.