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South Korean begins crackdown on online gambling
The crackdown follows the arrest last week of five local Web site operators for accepting bets and wagers over the Internet.
Although gambling is illegal in South Korea, hundreds of online casinos are operating here.
"From today, 11 domestic Internet service providers were required to put up filtering sofware against foreign gambling sites," an information and communications ministry official told AFP.
Korean-language gambling sites will be closed immediately, and software programs will be installed in schools and other public facilities to block access to cyber-casinos.
"Online gambling has been on the sharp rise," the official said, adding that the government was more concerned about the outflow of hard currency.
The government has no data on the number of regular online gamblers. But police found that about $270,000 had been flown out of the country in the past eight months through just two gambling sites using foreign servers.
The government has formed a task force involving police and tax authorities to track down online gamblers.
But the government has faced technical problems in blocking access to cyber-casinos becausemany South Korean gamblers log on to offshore sites using foreign servers and
pay through credit cards.
"Technically it is almost impossible to stop overseas gambling. So we will use the foreign currency law to punish habitual gamblers," the information and communications ministry official said.