By Kim Tae-gyu
Staff Reporter


The Korean government is cracking down on mobile-marketers who send promotional calls in bulk or mass mail text messages to cell phone users.

The Korea Information Security Agency Thursday announced that it has managed roughly 1,000 handsets as decoys to identify mobile spammers starting this month.

``Through the trap system, we found up to 1,700 spammers in less than a month. They will be punished and the necessary processes are now underway,’’ said Lim Jae-myung, director at the state-backed agency.

``Up until now, mobile spammers were elusive because recipients did not report them to the government. But this decoy system will make things different. It is like 1,000 reporters monitoring spammers around the clock,’’ Lim said.

Marketers are prohibited from placing promotional calls or sending advertising messages to mobile phone users who do not give explicit permission for them to do so in advance.

Violators of the so-called opt-in formula are subject to a maximum of 30 million won in fines, which are levied by the Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC).

``We think the trap system will work by making the stubborn illegal marketers subside. In addition, the system will be more efficient in months to come when spammers become criminally liable,’’ MIC Director Jang Seok-young said.

Currently, it is impossible to criminally charge mass mailers. But senders of mobile spam containing adult contents and drug sales can be sentenced to a year in prison beginning March 31.

Jang added the MIC will make an all-out onslaught on a new mobile headache, the one-ring call, which was aimed at avoiding the anti-spam regulations.

``We have not punished senders of one-ring calls. But we plan to levy fines on senders of one-ring calls identified through the trap system,’’ he said.

Some marketers have made numerous computer-generated calls to mobile phones that hang up after just one ring, typically through numbers with a dialing prefix of 060.

When curious recipients call back to the number, it is usually about obscene contents and the unsuspecting victims will be charged premium rates.

/font>

voc200@koreatimes.co.kr