SEOUL: South Korean adolescents with gambling addiction almost tripled in six years due to an easier access to online gambling through smartphones, data showed Wednesday.
The number of those aged 19 or under who had been under medical treatment for obsessive gambling came in at 111 between January and August this year, according to the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service data unveiled by Seo Dong-yong, lawmaker of the main opposition Democratic Party.
It nearly tripled compared to 39 tallied in the whole year of 2017, said Xinhua.
The number continued to increase to 65 in 2018, 93 in 2019, 98 in 2020 and 127 in 2021 before skidding to 102 in 2022.
The gambling addiction among teenagers had been on a steady rise as smartphones raised access to illegal online gambling.
The number of youths who had received counseling on gambling problems stood at 1,406 for the first eight months of this year, surging about 28-fold compared to 51 in the entire year of 2015. -Bernama-Xinhua
