Chuseok Voice Phishing Losses Top 100 Billion Won for First Time

Voice phishing schemes timed to South Korea's holiday season have grown steadily in scale, and losses in the month containing last year's Chuseok holiday topped 100 billion won ($72 million) for the first time. Smishing texts and fraudulent calls using pretexts such as misdelivered parcels or holiday gift registration surged before and after the holiday.

According to data the National Police Agency submitted to the office of Rep. Kim Ye-ji of the People Power Party on the 24th, losses in the month containing Chuseok rose from 51.6 billion won in September 2021 to 101.1 billion won in October last year, nearly doubling in four years. Over the same period, the number of cases rose only 169, from 1,812 to 1,981, showing that the scale of losses grew far faster than the number of incidents.

The average loss per case also jumped. In October last year, the average loss per case was 51 million won, 78.9% higher than in September 2021, when it was 28.5 million won. That means the loss borne by each individual victim has grown larger.

The damage was concentrated in the Seoul metropolitan area. Last year, Seoul recorded 516 cases and 32.4 billion won in losses, while southern Gyeonggi Province recorded 402 cases and 17.2 billion won. Combined losses in the two regions came to 49.6 billion won, half the national total.

The methods have also diversified to exploit the holiday season. Typical examples include smishing texts that send links to malicious apps on the pretext that a parcel address is wrong or that a Chuseok gift must be registered, and phone scams that approach victims with offers of low-interest holiday loans.

Crackdowns on organizations based overseas are also being stepped up. The number of overseas voice phishing ring members repatriated to South Korea has risen each year, to 199 in 2024, 261 last year and 305 through August this year.

The pattern of rising losses around the holidays is confirmed by other findings as well. According to data that Rep. Lee Yang-soo, a member of the National Assembly's National Policy Committee, received from the Financial Supervisory Service, there were 44,883 cases and 465 billion won in losses around the Lunar New Year and Chuseok holidays (January-February and September-October) from 2020 through last year. The average loss per person also rose 2.3 times, from 9.4 million won in January-February 2020 to 21.5 million won in the same period last year. Another finding showed that schemes impersonating public institutions accounted for more than 70% of all losses during the same period, suggesting that the localized spike in holiday-season damage moves in step with the overall crime trend.

Kim said that police and financial and telecommunications authorities should build a more comprehensive prevention system so that groups vulnerable to financial fraud, particularly older adults, do not fall victim during the holiday period.

Original reporting by Hyun Su-a for Seoul Economic Daily.

AI-translated from Korean. Quotes from foreign sources are based on Korean-language reports and may not reflect exact original wording.

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