Rep. Kim Sang-hoon of the People Power Party said Sunday that he had introduced an amendment to the Act on Registration of Credit Business and Protection of Financial Users, designed to strengthen the tracking and blocking of illegal lending conducted through social media.
"Illegal private lenders are hiding behind social media to evade detection, while the law remains stuck in the past," Kim said, explaining the rationale for the bill. "Through institutional measures that fill the blind spots in enforcement, we will root out illegal private lending and provide strong protection for victims."
Under current law, authorities can request the suspension of a phone number when it is used for illegal lending or similar activities. However, illegal private lenders have recently shifted from face-to-face and telephone operations, which carry a higher risk of detection, to non-face-to-face and anonymous operations using social media such as KakaoTalk and Line. Critics have pointed out that existing countermeasures are insufficient to address this shift.
According to data released by the Gyeonggi Welfare Foundation, 36.3% of victims who filed complaints in the first quarter of this year first encountered illegal private lending through social media. This figure exceeded the combined total of lending brokerage platforms (13.2%), text message advertisements (9.5%), and portal sites (8.7%).
In response, the amendment allows financial authorities to obtain information on social media accounts used for illegal lending—including the user's name, resident registration number, address, phone number, ID, registration date, and cancellation date—from social media operators, so that the information can be used for victim protection and investigative coordination. In addition, phone numbers confirmed to be linked to social media accounts involved in illegal lending would be treated as illegal lending phone numbers, allowing the governor of the Financial Supervisory Service to request that the Minister of Science and ICT block them.
