[DigitalToday reporter Jin-ho Lee (이진호)] Voice phishing crimes fell for four consecutive months, helped by the government’s eradication efforts. The government decided to further upgrade its response system amid growing concerns over the spread of new scams based on social media and messaging services.

The government held a pan-government voice phishing response task force meeting on Tuesday afternoon at the Government Complex Seoul, chaired by Chang-ryeol Yoon (윤창렬), head of the Office for Government Policy Coordination. Vice ministers from related agencies attended, including the Ministry of Science and ICT, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the Ministry of Justice, the Financial Services Commission, the Korea Communications Commission, the Personal Information Protection Commission, the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office, the National Police Agency and the Financial Supervisory Service.

The government established and implemented a comprehensive voice phishing plan in August 2025. It also launched the National Police Agency’s integrated response unit in September that year to mount an all-out pan-government response. As a result, voice phishing, which had been rising year on year through September 2025, saw both incident counts and losses fall for four straight months from October 2025 through January 2026.

Compared with a year earlier, the number of incidents fell 25.0 percent to 6,108 from 8,145. Losses also dropped 22.4 percent to 350.8 billion won from 451.8 billion won. The government said it assessed that the outcome reflected a combination of factors, including emergency blocking of illegal phone numbers, special crackdowns and strikes against overseas voice phishing hubs, stemming from the integrated response unit’s operations.

Concerns have been raised, however, that as non-face-to-face and online environments spread, crime methods could expand into everyday digital spaces such as social media and messaging apps. The task force decided to supplement and strengthen the existing response system while preparing measures tailored to new scam crimes.

The National Police Agency will strengthen cooperation with platform operators to build a structure that blocks crimes preemptively before they are carried out. Naver will push measures to identify and warn about suspicious conversations based on key words used in crime scenarios and to block accounts in advance. The National Police Agency also plans to work for the swift enactment of the pending bill on the Prevention of Telecommunications Multi-Victim Fraud.

The Financial Services Commission will reflect new scam types and cases in financial firms’ fraud detection systems and form an FDS consultative body to strengthen cooperation among related agencies. The Ministry of Justice will actively cooperate with the special response task force for transnational crime and expand a dedicated unit to recover proceeds from voice phishing crimes.

The Supreme Prosecutors’ Office will expand international cooperation with countries where criminal organizations are active, including Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and China, and will dispatch additional international cooperation investigators. It will also build a non-stop system linking voice phishing investigations to recovery of criminal proceeds and the return of victim assets.

Management of corporate accounts and illegally obtained mobile phones will also be tightened. The Financial Services Commission will expand temporary measures in cases deemed at high risk of crime by sharing detection results for such accounts within the financial sector. The Ministry of Science and ICT plans to strengthen requirements for opening multiple mobile lines under a corporate name and to prepare measures to build an integrated management system.

Chang-ryeol Yoon, head of the pan-government voice phishing task force, said the shift to declining voice phishing losses was the result of close cooperation among related agencies at home and abroad. He urged each agency to make an all-out effort this year to deliver results the public can feel in both voice phishing and new scam crimes.