Over 10,000 Illegal Online Drug Advertisement Posts Detected This Year

On the 20th, the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety announced that it had detected over 10,000 illegal advertisements for the sale and purchase of narcotics online this year.

From January to November, the Ministry inspected posts on social networking services (SNS) and in cooperation with the Korea Anti-Drug Movement Headquarters, detecting a total of 10,979 cases and requested access blocking measures from the Korea Communications Standards Commission for violations of the 'Narcotics Control Act.'

Most narcotics-related posts were in the form of buyers or sellers exposing anonymous SNS account IDs on platforms such as Telegram, Wickr, and Reddit to induce access. The websites where these posts appeared included local marketplaces, local attractions, clubs, hobbies, companies, academies, religious organizations, universities, shopping malls, games, and lodging businesses. The Ministry explained that these were mostly websites that had not been managed for a long time or were no longer in use.

According to the Narcotics Control Act, anyone who widely disseminates or presents information about prohibited acts to others is subject to imprisonment for up to three years or a fine of up to 30 million won. Possession, ownership, use, transportation, management, export, manufacture, administration, receipt, sale, brokerage of sale, or provision of psychotropic drugs is punishable by imprisonment for up to five years or a fine of up to 50 million won.

The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety stated that it plans to continue cooperating closely with online platform operators to quickly block accounts that create illegal narcotics-related posts.