Gyeonggi Province Office of Education and KGCC Sign Memorandum Targeting Youth Smartphone Gambling Exposure

Gyeonggi Province’s Office of Education has signed a memorandum of understanding with South Korea’s Gambling Control Commission. The agreement addresses rising gambling exposure among schoolchildren through smartphones by embedding preventative education into school routines.

Partnership Framework and Core Mechanisms

The memorandum, signed at Osan Seongho Middle School, connects gambling prevention education to a phone-free strategy and RAS activities built around reading, arts and sports. These elements limit access to gambling content while supplying structured, screen-free alternatives. The KGCC, which operates under the prime minister’s office and oversees gambling supervision plus illegal gambling monitoring, will support policy coordination, student protection measures, and exchanges of educational resources and prevention experts. Plans include analysis of operational data, development of pilot programmes, and construction of a model for national deployment. The approach prioritises systemic embedding over short-term campaigns.

At the signing, Gyeonggi education chief An Min-seok stated: “To effectively respond to youth gambling problems, close cooperation between the Office of Education, which best understands the school environment, and specialised prevention and treatment institutions is necessary.” He added: “I hope this agreement does not remain a mere event but leads to the implementation of practical policies.” As reported by iGaming Business, the pact positions South Korea alongside markets such as Ireland, which launched a national underage gambling awareness campaign in July.

Path to National Deployment

The memorandum establishes a mechanism for sustained integration of prevention into daily school operations rather than isolated events. This produces a concrete second-order effect: reduced reliance on digital devices during periods when students might otherwise encounter gambling content. What to watch is completion of the pilot programmes and the resulting national model, which will indicate whether the school-centred template can scale beyond Gyeonggi Province. The initiative surfaces one limitation in current coverage: absence of defined timelines or success metrics for the pilots themselves.

Reporting: iGaming Business (iGB)

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