hankyoreh

LG Dacom Corp. is accused of ignoring customer complaints and gaining profits, even as customers suffered financial damages for months due to fraudulent international collect calls.

Those placing the collect calls in question posted advertisements in September 2005 saying they were hiring women seeking part-time work that would allow them to study foreign languages. They hired several South Korean and Chinese-born Korean women and took them to China, the Philippines, and Thailand. Once there, they ordered the women to place international collect calls to anonymous men in South Korea. Some of the women were told to try to seduce Korean men via Internet chat sites. The men were shown pictures of pretty young women and made to believe these were their conversation partners. They were often promised the following: "When I come back to South Korea, let’s be together."

About 100,000 men received such international telephone calls and paid a total of 5.6 billion won (US$6 million) in return for enjoying these ‘conversations.’ A 47-year-old male, identified by his family name Park, along with several others earned 2.5 billion won through the scam by setting it up so they received 45-65 percent of the calling party’s expenses from telephone companies by providing the international collect call phone connections.

On June 3, the National Police Agency’s Cyber Terrorism Response Center (CTRC) busted four international telephone scam syndicates and arrested 20 suspects, including Park and a 33-year-old identified by his family name, Kim, on charges of fraud. Police also put six others on their wanted list and asked Interpol to cooperate in hunting for four out of the six.

In addition, police arrested a 48-year-old director of LG Dacom, who is only identified by his family name, Kim (unrelated to the 33-year-old suspect with the same last name). The LG Dacom official is being accused of signing a contract for provision of international telephone connections with those who set up the fraud scheme. A 35-year-old official at another telecommunications service company, who is only identified by the family name Jeong, was also arrested on fraud-related charges.

Ko Yeon-sun, a spokesperson at LG Dacom, said, "We knew about the telephone scam in February and ended the contract with the now-arrested international line providers in April. Kim was fired on May 31," the spokesperson said.

However, the situation and subsequent financial damages to customers had already been reported in January by The Hankyoreh. Given this fact, investigators have raised the question that the company may have overlooked the case in order to secure profits.

"LG Dacom did not take appropriate steps during a period of six months since December last year when victims’ complaints emerged. This is a case of ignoring corporate ethics," said Lee Yeong-pil, an official at the CTRC.

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]