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Government mulls issuing new lottery

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By Yoon Ja-young
  • Published Apr 17, 2014 5:41 pm KST
  • Updated Apr 17, 2014 5:41 pm KST

By Yoon Ja-young

The Ministry of Strategy and Finance is considering allowing new lotteries.

According to the ministry Thursday, it is going to examine the pros and cons of launching new lotteries, such as ones for special events, electronic lotteries, or one benchmarking Power Ball in the United States.

“We outsourced research to a third-party think tank to set up guidelines for lottery policy for the next decade, and it suggested that we diversify lotteries. We are going to consider the suggestion,” said an official at the ministry.

The research paper pointed out that the country’s lottery market is too dominated by “Lotto,” the most popular lottery at the moment. Of the 3.2 trillion won lottery market last year, Lotto took up 92.4 percent.

The report pointed out that the dominance of Lotto is negatively affecting the lottery market as people come to see only the speculative side.

On average, 52.5 billion won worth of Lotto tickets are sold each week, with the winner getting 2.1 billion won. A survey showed that most people think of a “jackpot” when they think of the lottery.

The research paper suggested diverse lotteries, such as the one issued only at Christmas, the profit from which will be used to help underprivileged neighborhoods.

It said that by diversifying lotteries, the dominance of Lotto will be decreased, and they can become more like leisure than purely speculative activities.

The official in charge of lotteries at the ministry said the country has too few compared with other countries. “The United States, Canada and European countries have very diverse kinds of lotteries. Provincial governments also allow lotteries in some cases,” he said.

However, he said that the government will be careful in introducing new lotteries. “As a lottery is a speculative business, there should be balance between this and the pursuance of public benefits. As the government is aware that allowing more lotteries has to do with this speculative side, we will approach the matter with much consideration.”