Voice Phishing Losses Surpass 1 Trillion Won...94% Begin with Phone Calls or Texts

Son Myoungsoo: "Institution Impersonation Losses Reach 988.4 Billion Won"

"Average Loss per Victim Nearly Sixfold Increase in a Decade"

Last year, damages from voice phishing surpassed 1 trillion won for the first time ever. Although 94% of these crimes began through telecommunications networks such as phone calls and text messages, and over 100,000 fraudulent accounts were frozen, the actual victim reimbursement rate remained in the 20% range. There are growing calls for systemic improvements that go beyond financial sector follow-up measures—to block crimes at the communication network stage and to expedite relief for victims.

According to materials submitted by the National Police Agency, Financial Supervisory Service, and others, which were obtained by Minsoo Sohn of the National Assembly’s Political Affairs Committee on the 29th, last year’s damages from voice phishing reached a record high of 1.2578 trillion won. This represents a 2.8-fold increase from 447.2 billion won in 2023, and a 47.2% rise from the previous year’s 854.5 billion won. The average loss per victim surged from 8.62 million won in 2016 to 53.84 million won last year—nearly a sixfold increase over 10 years.

In particular, there was a sharp rise in so-called “institution impersonation” scams, where criminals pretended to be prosecutors, police, or the Financial Supervisory Service. Damages from such scams reached 988.4 billion won last year, accounting for 78.6% of the total. This amount has more than quadrupled from 236.4 billion won in 2023 within just two years—rapidly approaching the 1 trillion won mark. Notably, 5,770 victims last year were under the age of 20, demonstrating that such scams are not limited to older adults.

The initial point of contact for these crimes was concentrated on phone calls and text messages. From January to August this year, 7,841 out of 8,584 voice phishing cases—91.3%—began with phone approaches, and including text messages raised the share to 94%. The number of cases where caller ID spoofing was blocked between January and August this year reached 720,065, already surpassing the 677,735 cases for all of last year.

On the other hand, while the number of fraudulent bank accounts frozen by financial companies increased from 57,990 in 2021 to 102,307 last year, the reimbursement rate fell from 35.9% in 2021 to 26.3% last year. Cases have emerged where stolen funds are transferred to other accounts or converted to virtual assets before the freeze, highlighting that post-incident account freezes alone have limited effectiveness in recovering damages.

Assemblyman Sohn stated, "With annual voice phishing losses now exceeding 1 trillion won and the reimbursement rate remaining in the 20% range, we must act quickly to reform systems so victims can receive prompt compensation." He added, "Given that 94% of these crimes enter through telecommunications networks such as calls and texts, it is also critical to implement preventative and accountability measures at the network stage—including blocking burner phones, filtering spoofed numbers, and managing bulk text relays."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.