Gambling News by Gambling Headquarters

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.