Lottery First Prize Banner Hung in Neighborhood... "Is It Me?" Late Realization of Non-Winner

Pension Lottery 720+ 216th Draw Winner Interview
"My Wife Saw the Banner and Told Me to Check"

A story has emerged about a lottery winner who discovered that they were actually the person featured on the banner for the 1st and 2nd prize winners of the pension lottery displayed in their neighborhood.

On the 17th, Donghaeng Lottery released an interview on their website with Mr. A, who simultaneously won 1st and 2nd prizes in the 216th draw of the Pension Lottery 720+ held on the 28th of last month. Mr. A purchased the lottery ticket at a lottery store in Pocheon-si, Gyeonggi Province, and said, "After buying a Lotto ticket, I had 5,000 won in change left, so I bought a pension lottery ticket for the first time in a while."

[Photo by Donghaeng Lottery]

He shared, "A few days later, my spouse bought a lottery ticket on the way home from work and saw the banner for the 1st and 2nd prize winners of the pension lottery. They asked me, 'There’s a 1st prize winner from our neighborhood in the pension lottery. Did you buy a pension lottery ticket?'" It was then that Mr. A recalled the pension lottery ticket he had bought after a long time and checked the winning numbers on the spot. To his surprise, he was the person featured on that banner," he explained.

The Pension Lottery 720+ ticket Mr. A won consists of one 1st prize ticket and four 2nd prize tickets, totaling five tickets. The 1st prize pays 7 million won monthly for 20 years, and the 2nd prize pays 1 million won monthly for 10 years, both in the form of annuities. Having won both 1st and 2nd prizes simultaneously, Mr. A will receive 11 million won monthly for the next 10 years, followed by 7 million won monthly for the subsequent 10 years. The total lottery winnings over 20 years amount to 2.16 billion won.

He said, "I was very excited and happy about winning. Things hadn’t been going well at work, and I had been under a lot of stress, but I think my positive attitude brought me this great luck." He added, "I often dreamed about celebrities appearing. After repaying my loans, I plan to use the winnings for my children’s savings and retirement funds."

Meanwhile, according to a survey by Statistics Korea, 2,212,000 households purchased lottery tickets in the first quarter of this year, accounting for 10.1% of the surveyed households. This means one in every ten households bought a lottery ticket, the highest proportion in the past five years. On average, lottery-buying households spent 7,321 won per month on lottery tickets. When broken down by income quintiles, the highest number of lottery-buying households was in the 3rd quintile (the 40-60% income bracket) with 506,000 households, accounting for 22.9%. This was followed by the 4th quintile (22.8%), 5th quintile (22.4%), 2nd quintile (17.3%), and 1st quintile (14.6%). In other words, lottery purchases were most common among middle-income, high-income, and low-income households, in that order.

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