Friday, September 15, 2006

The government is continuing to shut down access to Korean-language gambling
Web sites, whose operations are based in foreign countries.
The Ministry of Information and Communication yesterday said it had blocked
this month alone up to 53 gambling sites, which had moved servers overseas
to avoid the grip of the local laws. The measure is unprecedented because
these gambling sites constitute 29.3 percent of the 181 foreign gambling
sites banned by the ministry this year. ``After domestic law enforcement
agencies strengthened controls on gambling sites amid the `Sea Story'
scandal, some of them moved operations to overseas nations,''
Information-Communication Minister Rho Jun-hyong told a press conference.
``We chased the elusive sites and denied access to them in collaboration
with broadband companies and portal sites. We plan to continue such
efforts,'' Rho said. The recent gambling scandal caught the nation off guard
last month when prosecutors indicted heads of two firms manufacturing
illegally-doctored video slot machines named ``Pada Iyagi,'' or ``Sea
Story.''

Most of the gaming machines, of which more than 45,000 units were sold, were
unlawfully reprogrammed to allow higher payouts than the legal limit of
20,000 won.

When the prosecution got wind of the wrongdoings, many Koreans had already
fallen victim to gambling and this prompted a wide-ranging crackdown on
illegal gambling including online sites.

Some sites tried to sidestep the clean-up by transferring servers to foreign
countries such as the United States and Canada, where the arm of Korean laws
cannot reach.

``To pinpoint the attempts to dodge crackdowns, as many as 500 monitoring
staff from both the public and private sectors have kept close eyes on
cyberspace this month,'' Rho said.

``At our request, portal sites currently do not provide search results for
gambling-related queries, a step aimed at preventing gambling addiction,''
he continued.

However, there remains a concern _ foreign-language gambling sites will
still be available as the minister has no plans to take issue with them
immediately.