Korea Toughens Monitoring of Online Gambling Online Poker

The Korean Ministry of Information and Communication announced last Friday that it will toughen monitoring measures on online gambling, including online poker, reported the Korea Herald.

The ministry said it will work with related government agencies, including the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the National Police Agency and the Information and Communication Ethics Committee, in a crackdown on online gambling, which is illegal in Korea.

The Ministry of Culture and Tourism, which recently revised the Game Industry Promotion Act to ban currency-trading websites, will toughen the Game Rating Board's screening process when approving a game site, the Information Ministry said.

The National Police Agency recently reported that the number of online gambling sites that it asked the ethics committee to block surged to 291 as of late May from 76 last year.

"Illegal online gambling sites sign up members through a secret IP address at a specific time. And such sites are hard to find because they are increasingly good at evading IP tracking," said Lee Tai-hee, director of the information safety team at the Information Ministry.

The ethics committee, which has authority to ask local network providers to block illegal websites, will request police to investigate three local online gambling sites and block 21 currency-trading game sites that were recently uncovered, the Information Ministry said.

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