Lottery sales increase 1.5% in 2014: ministry

Growth in South Korea’s lottery ticket sales has slowed down in recent years. Lottery ticket sales across the country increased merely 1.5 percent to 3,282.7 billion won in 2014 from a year earlier, according to the finance ministry Wednesday.

Growth rate fell to 1.5 percent in 2013 from 3.4 percent in 2012, after reaching 22.0 percent in 2011 when pension lotteries were introduced.

Online lotteries, called "Lotto," took the lion’s share of 3,048.9 billion won or 92.9 percent of the total sales last year, up 2 percent from a year earlier, followed by offline and electronic lotteries with 233.8 billion won, down 4.3 percent from 2013.

As of 2013, South Korea's lottery ticket sales accounted for 0.23 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP), a figure that halves the OECD average of 0.45 percent. OECD stands for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Park Sae-jin swatchsjp@ajunews.com

Lottery sales increase 1.5% in 2014: ministry

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