South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT has fast-tracked four ICT regulatory sandbox pilot exemptions, including voiceprint-based voice phishing detection.

The ministry said on Wednesday it held the second fast-track expert committee on the ICT regulatory sandbox in writing from July 22 to 29 and designated a total of four cases as pilot exemptions.

The fast-track expert committee is run to quickly process new tasks that are identical or similar in content and method to existing temporary permits or pilot exemption tasks.

The designated tasks are a voiceprint-based mobile voice phishing detection service by Samsung Electronics and the National Forensic Service, shared lodging using vacant rural homes promoted separately by Moonline and W&B, and a mobile electronic notification service for financial guidance leaflets by the Korea Post.

The voiceprint-based voice phishing detection service applies an exemption allowing voice information to be used for AI training and detection without the consent of the voice phishing suspect. It loads on smartphones an AI trained on voice phishing call data and alerts users to suspicious calls.

The shared lodging project using vacant rural homes allows corporations to lease vacant homes on a long-term basis or buy them, remodel them and provide them as detached accommodations. Korea Post can now send by mobile the financial guidance leaflets it had delivered by mail through its own electronic document relay service.

Hong Sung-wan (홍성완), director general for telecommunications policy at the ministry, said, "We expect demonstrations of innovative services to expand in areas closely related to people's daily lives." He added, "We will support innovative new ICT technologies and services so they can enter the market quickly."