The period for suspending phone numbers used in crimes such as voice phishing, illegal lend, and burner phones will be shortened from the current 2–3 days to within 24 hours.
The Central Radio Management Service said on the 28th that it will completely revamp the "illegal-use phone number suspension system" to suspend illegal phone numbers quickly and accurately and will operate it starting on the 31st.
Under the current system, when related agencies (the Korean National Police Agency, city and provincial governors, the Financial Supervisory Service, etc.) request suspension, the relevant carrier is identified and ordered to suspend service, but it has taken 2–3 days to complete the suspension. That is because some phone numbers are difficult to match to a carrier in real time, and manual input is required when requesting a suspension.
As a follow-up to the pan-government "comprehensive plan to eradicate voice phishing" released in Aug. last year, the Central Radio Management Service built a system to identify carriers for illegal numbers in real time, linked it with the Korean National Police Agency's system via an application programming interface (API), unified the suspension channel, and shortened the processing period to within 24 hours.
Choi Junho, head of the Central Radio Management Service, said, "By overhauling the suspension system, we expect to significantly reduce public harm from telecommunications service crimes by ensuring the swift and accurate suspension of illegal phone numbers."