Blocking access to illegal gambling sites ineffective without cutting off money flow

[Anchor]

Online illegal gambling is not easily eradicated.

There is a reason for this.

While access blocking is on the rise, there are ways to bypass it.

Reporter Park Young-min has investigated.

[Report]

When entering specific words into an internet search engine, several gambling sites appear.

I tried accessing one site.

It advertises that it can always provide services safely, even if you do not know the internet address or if access is blocked.

Originally, it is a service using a Korean internet address, but it creates multiple other addresses under one internet address.

Even if a gambling site called 'Hong Gil-dong.com' is blocked, it allows access to other gambling sites using a separately created address.

By using this method, the current government's access blocking measures can also be rendered ineffective.

[Online illegal gambling site operator/voice altered: "Whether they block access or not, for 20,000 won or 30,000 won, it can be easily bypassed."]

The blocking of access to illegal gambling sites is also progressing slowly.

Last year, the Illegal Gambling Industry Monitoring and Reporting Center requested the Korea Communications Standards Commission to block access to over 37,000 illegal gambling sites.

Among these, about 1,500 cases are still operating illegally due to delays in the review process.

As there are no signs of illegal gambling being eradicated, some parents are considering sending their children, who have fallen into habitual gambling, abroad for study.

[Father of a student addicted to online illegal gambling/voice altered: "(I) can't be with my child 24 hours a day, and I have no hope. I'm giving up. Giving up."]

Experts emphasize that the most effective way to eradicate online illegal gambling is to 'cut off the money flow'.

This means preventing money from being withdrawn from gambling site operating accounts.

The Presidential Committee on National Cohesion announced in June that it would prepare a bill to freeze gambling accounts, but there has been no news since.

[Kim Seung-soo/Member of the National Assembly Culture, Sports and Tourism Committee/People Power Party: "It has been a year since (the intergovernmental task force was formed), and meetings have only been held about three times. Shouldn't the government respond actively...?"]

Meanwhile, a bill to block money from accounts used in crimes, called the 'Internet Gambling Eradication Act', has been proposed by lawmakers, and the results of the review are being closely watched.

This is KBS News, Park Young-min.