(image: Korea Bizwire)
SEOUL, May 29 (Korea Bizwire) — A majority of the victims of “romance scams” in South Korea are women under 30 years of age, a study showed Monday.
Romance scams involve pretending to have romantic intentions towards a victim, gaining their affection, and then exploiting that goodwill for fraudulent purposes.
Park Beom-jin, a student in the master’s program at Korea University Graduate School of Information Security, conducted a study of 280 reported cases of romance scams to the National Police Agency between January and June last year.
The study revealed that 71.4 percent of the victims were women.
When sorted by age, the majority of victims were under 20 years old (52.1 percent), followed by those in their 30s (35.4 percent), and 40s (10.4 percent). A significant 87.5 percent of the victims were under 40.
“Young Koreans are accustomed to making new friends online, making them more susceptible to being targeted for romance scams,” the report said.
Romance scams resulted in total losses of 3.7 billion won (US$2.78 million) during the specified period, as per data from the National Intelligence Service.
Aggregate losses increased from 370 million won in 2020 to 2 billion won from January to November 2021.
When categorized by type, the majority (55.4 percent) of scams were related to currency exchange, followed by substituted payments (37.1 percent), and cryptocurrency investment (7.5 percent).
Most victims initially encountered scammers through social media, messenger apps, and matchmaking apps.
Lina Jang (linajang@koreabizwire.com)
