Police to Prevent Money Laundering Using Culture Gift Certificates

Implementation of 1-Year Retention Policy for Company Member Information

Seodaemun-gu, Seoul Police Agency building. Photo by Mun Ho-nam munonam@

[Asia Economy Reporter Seongpil Cho] The National Police Agency announced on the 17th that it will improve the subscriber information retention system of related companies to prevent money laundering using cultural gift certificates.

Until now, cultural gift certificate issuers such as Cultureland and Book&Life have deleted subscriber information immediately upon membership withdrawal. However, with this improvement measure, subscriber information will be retained for up to one year from the withdrawal date, which is expected to strengthen police investigations. This measure comes in response to the recent rapid increase in cases involving fraud using cultural gift certificates. According to the National Police Agency, related cases increased significantly from 727 in 2019 to 3,582 in 2020, and 3,900 last year.

The police reviewed guidelines from the Personal Information Protection Commission and have been conducting practical consultations with companies such as Cultureland. Through these consultations, it was agreed to receive information such as names, IDs, CI (encrypted resident registration numbers), and mobile phone numbers from related companies. The police plan to promote revisions to the privacy policies of other cultural gift certificate issuers such as Happymoney in the future. Currently, Happymoney retains member information for one month from the withdrawal date, but is considering extending this period.

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