Voice phishing-linked frozen bank accounts set to hit record high this year

Financial Services Commission Vice Chairman Kwon Dae-young / Yonhap

More than 150,000 bank accounts at Korea’s six largest commercial lenders were used in voice phishing crimes over the past five years, government data showed Thursday.

The figure comes amid a growing push by lawmakers and financial regulators for legislation that would hold banks partially liable for compensating victims, in a stronger measure to curb financial fraud.

Experts say Korea should establish a system that allows real-time information sharing among banks, law enforcement entities and financial regulators.

Ministry of Science and ICT data showed that voice phishing damages exceeded 600 billion won ($432 million) in the first half of this year, up from 324.3 billion won from the previous year.

According to Rep. Park Sung-hoon of the main opposition People Power Party, a total of 150,082 accounts across the country’s top six lenders — KB Kookmin, Shinhan, Hana, Woori, NH NongHyup and Industrial Bank of Korea (IBK) — were frozen after being confirmed as fraud-related between 2020 and March this year.

The data provided by the Financial Supervisory Service was based on claims filed by victims of voice phishing scams seeking monetary compensation.

The annual figures are on a steady rise from the 23,381 frozen in 2020. The figure has already reached 10,488 in the first three months of 2025 and is expected to exceed 40,000 for the whole year.

KB had the highest number of frozen accounts (34,436), followed by NH NongHyup (27,381), Woori (24,816), Shinhan (22,510), Hana (21,378) and IBK (19,561).

Regional banks had lower overall numbers, but they are increasing.

Over the same period, a total of 9,621 accounts were frozen at five regional banks —Kwangju Bank, Jeonbuk Bank, BNK Busan Bank, BNK Gyeongnam Bank and Jeju Bank.

“The number of frozen accounts suggests vulnerabilities in our financial security network,” Park said. “Without reforms and close coordination among financial and law enforcement organizations, more customers will fall victim to sophisticated financial criminal crimes.”

The Financial Services Commission (FSC) is preparing new legislation that would require financial firms to compensate victims of voice phishing.

Under the proposed legislation to be enacted by December this year, banks and other financial institutions may be required to partially or fully reimburse victims tricked into transferring money to organized scam rings.

The FSC said last month that this initiative will be aided by artificial intelligence (AI) platforms in detecting suspicious activity and subsequently freezing accounts.

“The FSC move reflects an increase in sophisticated forms of AI-mediated financial fraud. We will enhance response measures to beef up infrastructure and monitoring systems,” an industry official said.