Excessive Competitions between Departments in Lottery Business

The government decided to reestablish the `Lottery-Issuing Control Committee (LICC)` to regulate competitive issuing of lottery, which has stirred up people`s gambling spirit, during Feb.

An official of the Office for Government Policy Coordination said yesterday that, "The government decided to reestablish the LICC, which was dissolved in Dec.1998, under the Office of the Prime Minister and will legislate a Prime Minister`s instruction within this month. For the long run, the government will legislate an integrated lottery law to control the issuing of lottery."

The LICC will control the excessive competitions between departments in lottery issuing by mediating each department`s lottery issuing businesses and regulating the licenses of lottery business, the amount of lottery issuing, and the highest winning prize.

Although there is a lottery issuing conference, which is consisted of each department`s working-level officials, it does not have any legal force, and thus it is only nominal.

Since the government issued the housing lottery in 1969 to make a fund for national housing construction project, ten government institutions are issuing 20 kinds of lotteries. Last year`s lottery market scale was 600 billion won.

After the introduction of some lotteries that present 40 or 50 billion won for the highest prize (plus lottery and big super double lottery), the lottery business has been criticized for inciting people`s gambling spirit.

An official of the Office of the Prime Minister said, "The lottery business licenses have issued excessively by changing each department`s law. Thus, the lottery management institutions incite excessive competitions by presenting too much money for prizes in order to secure their funds and market share."

Nonetheless, the reserve rate of the fund, which is accumulated by lottery selling, records lower than normal level, 30 percent.

Jong-Hoon Lee taylor55@donga.com