South Korea scam survey: exposure jumped to 59% in a year

The Global Anti-Scam Alliance has published new survey data from South Korea, and the findings show how scam exposure has grown and how few victims report what happened. The Global Anti-Scam Alliance surveyed 1,090 South Korean adults and found scam exposure up sharply year on year. If a scam reaches someone, treat the moment of contact as the risk point, not the moment money moves.

What to do

• Treat any unexpected contact, message or call as unverified until checked independently.
• Stop before sharing personal information or money, even mid-conversation with someone who sounds legitimate.
• Report any scam contact or loss to the authorities, since the survey found very few victims do this.
• Talk to a victim if someone close to you reports a loss, since most carry a mental wellbeing impact afterward.

The numbers lay out a chain, and each link narrows what happens next. Fifty-nine percent of respondents encountered a scam in the past year, compared with 44% in 2025. That is the exposure step, and it grew fast.

Confidence did not grow with it. Sixty-five percent say they are confident recognizing scams, yet 44% of those exposed went on to interact with a scammer anyway. Confidence and contact are separate things; the survey shows people can believe they would spot a scam and still engage with one when it arrives.

The final numbers are where the real damage sits. Four percent of respondents lost money or shared personal information that led to financial loss. Only 2% reported the scam to authorities, meaning most loss events never reach a record anywhere. Among those who became victims, 77% reported an impact on their mental wellbeing, and 26% lost money to scams more than once.

A person who has already lost money once is more likely, not less, to lose money again. The sequence from exposure to interaction to loss is not a single bad decision; it is a series of steps where most people stop, a shrinking number don't, and the ones who do are often targeted again. Publishing this data gives a reader a way to locate themselves on that chain, rather than only hearing about it after the fact.

The gap between the 59% who met a scam and the 2% who reported one shows that reporting is not happening at anywhere near the rate scams are happening. Authorities are working from a fraction of the real picture.

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