Government: "Overseas lottery distribution in Korea is illegal... Buyers may also be punished"

A court ruling has declared that distributing or selling overseas lottery tickets within South Korea is illegal.

On the 20th, the Ministry of Economy and Finance announced that the Supreme Court last month made a final ruling that distributing and selling overseas lottery tickets domestically is unlawful. In the ruling, the Supreme Court stated, "Facilitating or inducing the purchase of overseas lottery tickets domestically violates related laws such as the Criminal Act, which restricts the excessive issuance of gambling lottery tickets (crime of mediating lottery ticket sales)," and upheld the lower court's sentence of a 5 million KRW fine (April 2022).

In recent years, purchasing US lottery tickets through websites and mobile apps has become widespread in South Korea, but there were no clear guidelines or laws under domestic law. However, Article 248, Paragraph 2 of the Criminal Act (crime of mediating lottery ticket sales) stipulates that anyone who mediates lottery ticket sales without legal authorization shall be punished by imprisonment for up to three years or a fine of up to 20 million KRW.

Lottery sales are breaking records, possibly due to the impact of the recession. Next year's projected sales are expected to reach 7.3 trillion won. Several lottery slips are inserted at a kiosk in Jongno-gu, Seoul. Photo by Heo Younghan younghan@

The government explained, "Through this ruling, it has been confirmed that selling overseas lottery tickets via unmanned terminals (kiosks), websites, and mobile apps online is all illegal."

According to government investigations, two domestic companies were found to be operating a total of 379 unmanned overseas lottery ticket sales terminals nationwide.

The government urged that if overseas lottery ticket sales activities are discovered online or offline, they should be reported to the nearest police station, and warned that not only sellers but also buyers of illegal lottery tickets can be punished, so caution is necessary.