Hong Nam-ki: "We Will Strongly Respond to Voice Phishing... Block Numbers and Preemptively Block Malicious Apps"

Opening Remarks at the 49th Economic Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasure Headquarters Meeting on the 2nd

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Sejong=Asia Economy Reporter Kim Hyunjung] Hong Nam-ki, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Finance, stated that he will take measures to protect the assets of ordinary citizens by supporting the development of technologies and apps that block voice phishing.

In his opening remarks at the 49th Economic Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters meeting held at the Seoul Government Complex on the morning of the 2nd, Deputy Prime Minister Hong said, "The annual damage from voice phishing exceeds 700 billion KRW, and overall, harm to ordinary citizens caused by the so-called three major illegal activities?voice phishing, illegal private loans, and illegal multi-level marketing?continues to occur."

He added, "The government plans to select ten immediate response tasks and take strong action. First, regarding voice phishing, we will promote the introduction of a new messaging service that makes verification easy, expand the scope of phone numbers subject to suspension, support the development of technologies to pre-block suspicious calls and malicious apps, and strengthen the crime response system by establishing an integrated reporting system."

The scope of phone numbers subject to suspension will include numbers used for face-to-face extortion-type voice phishing and numbers sending smishing messages. Furthermore, through collaboration between the Ministry of Science and ICT and the National Police Agency, the government will engage in the development of voice phishing prevention technologies (2.6 billion KRW in the 2022 government budget), the Deputy Prime Minister explained.

Regarding illegal private loans, Deputy Prime Minister Hong said, "We will strengthen support for vulnerable groups by activating joint lawsuits against the same illegal private loan operators and promote stricter punishment of illegal private loan operators through amendments to the Loan Business Act." He also emphasized, "Regarding illegal multi-level marketing, we will significantly strengthen market monitoring, including the activation of a reward system for reporting."

On this day, Deputy Prime Minister Hong also mentioned the service infrastructure advancement plan and youth support policies prepared through the 2nd Service Industry Innovation Task Force (TF). In particular, to improve productivity in the service industry, he announced that they will promote core tasks in three plus one areas: advancement in three major fields?research and development (R&D), standards and certification, and service statistics?and ‘training of core service personnel.’ He explained, "Next year, we will activate R&D by expanding government investment in service R&D and establishing a system to respond to copyright infringement, support the standards and certification system by preparing a roadmap for developing standards for the top 100 core services, and strengthen the training of core personnel in new service areas such as the metaverse."

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