Theft from voice phishing over the past five years amounted to nearly two trillion won, just 30 percent of which was returned.

Citing data from the justice ministry and the Financial Supervisory Service(FSS), Democratic Party(DP) Rep. Lee Tah-ney said there were around 248-thousand cases between 2017 and 2021, with losses totaling one-point-eight trillion won, or one-point-four billion U.S. dollars.

Of the stolen funds, only 29-point-nine percent, or 527 billion won, was returned by financial institutions, with the low recovery rate attributed to the difficulty in retrieving money after it has been withdrawn as cash by the perpetrator.

The total amount of stolen funds estimated in the data does not include face-to-face transactions, meaning the actual total is likely higher.

Although the law on the confiscation of corruption-acquired assets was revised in 2019 to allow the prosecution to freeze and return them to the owner, the process is long and arduous, with only 17 cases closed successfully between 2020 and August of this year.