Voice phishing incidents and financial losses have declined for four consecutive months from October last year through January, the government announced.
The government held a cross-agency voice phishing response task force meeting at the Seoul Government Complex in Jongno-gu on the 25th and released these findings. The government has mounted a comprehensive response, establishing and implementing a comprehensive voice phishing countermeasure plan in August last year and launching the National Police Agency's Integrated Response Unit in September.
As a result, voice phishing—which had been increasing year-on-year through September last year—showed declines in both incidents and losses for four consecutive months from October through January. The number of voice phishing cases fell 25% from 8,145 to 6,108, while losses decreased 22.4% from 451.8 billion won to 350.8 billion won.
The decline is attributed to the combined effects of the Integrated Response Unit's operations, including emergency blocking of illegal phone numbers, special enforcement crackdowns, and strikes against overseas voice phishing bases.
However, with non-face-to-face and online fraud crimes spreading, the cross-agency task force decided to continue strengthening existing voice phishing response systems. The group also discussed countermeasures specialized for emerging scam crimes.
The National Police Agency plans to strengthen collaboration with platform operators to build a response structure that can preemptively block crimes before execution. Naver will identify and warn users of suspicious conversations based on key keywords used in criminal scenarios and block criminal accounts in advance.
The Financial Services Commission plans to incorporate emerging scam types and cases into financial institutions' Fraud Detection Systems (FDS) to strengthen detection capabilities and establish an FDS consultative body for organic cooperation among related agencies.
The Ministry of Justice will actively cooperate with the Transnational Crime Special Response Task Force for scam crime countermeasures while expanding dedicated departments for recovering voice phishing criminal proceeds.
The Supreme Prosecutors' Office will continue strengthening international cooperation on emerging scam crimes. It plans to expand cooperative frameworks with Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and China—where criminal organizations are active—dispatch additional international cooperation investigators, and establish a non-stop system linking voice phishing investigation, criminal proceeds recovery, and victim asset restitution.
Additionally, the government plans to strengthen management of corporate accounts and burner phones to block potential criminal exploitation at its source.