By Cho Jin-seo
Staff Reporter
Some 47,000 Koreans have more than four mobile phones registered to their accounts and some of them are suspected of using them to facilitate criminal activities, a report showed on Tuesday.
According to Grand National Party lawmaker Kim Tae-hwan, 0.1 percent of the nation's population have a total of 647,000 mobile phones by three separate mobile carriers _ an average of 14 units per person.
Most multiple phone users have bought them for business purposes, but some of the phones are believed to be used in crimes, Kim said. According to an earlier report from the Office of the Prime Minister, 60,743 cases of false mobile phone registration were reported to the police between June 2006 and August 2007.
``The mobile service companies should enhance their security policies to protect customers from possible damage,'' Kim said.
In South Korea, most mobile phones are contract-based _ they must be registered to one's personal account, identified with the 13-digit resident registration code of the person, and bills are paid monthly. On the other hand, prepaid phones are mostly used by foreigners.
Due to the tight phone registration policy, criminal activities often involve phones that are surreptitiously registered on stolen identification. Some mobile shops also use the same trick when inflating their sales performance to show their headquarters.
Mobile firms played down the allegation, saying that they have preventive measures to monitor unscrupulous use.
SK Telecom, with which 29,000 people are using more than four phones numbers, said that it charges a deposit of 200,000 won per unit after a person buys an 11th phone. KTF said that it verifies the credit rating of multiple phone users.
Meanwhile, the report also showed that foreigners are barred from owning more than two phones while Korean nationals are free from such a limitation.
SK Telecom said that they separate foreigners into three classes _ superior, normal, and short-term visitors. The ``superior'' class is allowed to have two contract-based phones and two prepaid phones, while the ``normal'' class can have one contract-based phone and two prepaid phones. Short-term visitors are only allowed two prepaid phones.
Diplomats, employees of major companies and U.S. military personnel are eligible for ``superior'' class, the firm's spokesman said.
KTF and LG Telecom said that they provide only one mobile phone to long-term foreign residents regardless of their job and social status.
indizio@koreatimes.co.kr
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