Donghaeng Electronic Lottery

What the Donghaeng electronic lottery games are

Donghaeng Lottery is the company that runs every lottery in South Korea, and alongside the paper tickets sold at shops it operates a family of electronic lottery games that exist only online. The company offers nine internet lottery games in total, all sold through its official website, www.dhlottery.co.kr¹.

Korea's lotteries come in four shapes: the online lottery (the famous Lotto 6/45), printed instant tickets, printed and electronic combined draw tickets, and the electronic lottery, which itself splits into two kinds: draw-type games and instant games⁶. This page is about that last group, the electronic games you buy and play on the website.

The draw-type electronic games work like rapid lotteries. Powerball and Speed Kino draw every 5 minutes, and Mega Bingo draws every 8 minutes, so there is always a new round minutes away⁸. The instant games work like scratch cards on a screen: you buy a ticket, scratch it open in your browser, and see immediately whether you won².

Internet sales of Korean lottery tickets began in 2018, and the electronic games have since become the quickest and cheapest way to play the national lottery: a single play costs KRW 500 or KRW 1,000, and you never need to visit a shop⁶.

If you are curious about the wider lottery world in Korea, see the South Korea lottery and the Donghaeng Lottery overview.

Legal basis and minimum age: 19 under the Lottery and Lottery Fund Act

The electronic lottery sits under the Lottery and Lottery Fund Act, the same law that governs every Korean lottery ticket. The practical rule is simple: you must be at least 19 years old to buy any lottery ticket in South Korea, and the game pages state this plainly².

To play the electronic games you need an account on the Donghaeng Lottery website, and registration is limited to adults aged 19 or older who complete identity verification, either through Naver's verification service or mobile phone verification⁵. This applies to citizens and foreign residents alike: anyone who can pass the identity check and is of age can register and play. Visitors without a Korean identity verification route will generally not be able to open an account, even though the age rule itself would not stop them.

Instant games: Triple Luck, Treasure Hunter and Catch Me

The three headline instant games are Triple Luck, Treasure Hunter and Catch Me. All three are sold only on the Donghaeng Lottery homepage, and all three tell you instantly whether you won².

Triple Luck is the flagship. Each ticket costs KRW 1,000 and contains three separate games: a KRW 500,000,000 game, a KRW 100,000,000 game and a bonus game. You scratch each one to reveal either three matching winning symbols or a match between your lucky numbers and your numbers². The first prize is KRW 500,000,000, and the site shows first-prize wins in real time as they happen².

Treasure Hunter is a slot-style game on a 5x3 grid. You buy a ticket for KRW 500, symbols appear on the shape you chose, and three or more matching symbols win. Five crown symbols take the first prize, a guaranteed minimum of KRW 5,000,000³. A 60-second countdown starts when the check button activates, and the ticket checks itself automatically if you do not scratch in time³.

Catch Me is the cheapest game on the site at KRW 500 per game. You choose 6 of 11 windows, and if three identical amount symbols appear, you win that amount. The first prize is KRW 10,000,000, and you can select a multiplier of up to x5, which raises both your stake and the prize: with the x5 multiplier the first prize becomes KRW 50,000,000¹⁰. You can buy up to 5 games (KRW 5,000) per person per transaction¹.

Prices, prizes and odds by game

Here is what each game costs and what it pays. The instant games have fixed prize tiers; the draw games have base prizes that grow as more people play.

Triple Luck prize table (KRW 1,000 per ticket)²:

The overall chance of winning anything across all tiers is 1 in 3.0, and the bonus game has its own odds of 1 in 441.2².

Treasure Hunter prize table (KRW 500 per game)³:

The overall chance of hitting any prize in Treasure Hunter is 1 in 4.0³.

Catch Me prize table (KRW 500 per game, prizes shown at x1)¹⁰:

The overall chance of winning anything in Catch Me is 1 in 3.6; Triple Luck's 1 in 3.0 is the best overall odds of the three instant games¹⁰.

The draw games have their own structures. Powerball costs KRW 1,000 per game: you pick 5 general balls from 1 to 28 and 1 Powerball from 0 to 9, and draws happen every 5 minutes. The first prize starts at KRW 30,000,000 plus alpha and is capped at KRW 300,000,000, with first-prize odds of 1 in 982,800.0 and overall odds of 1 in 4.1⁹. Winning numbers are released in batches three times a day, at 12:00, 18:00 and 24:00⁹.

Speed Kino also costs KRW 1,000 per game and draws every 5 minutes, with 22 numbers drawn each round. You pick 2 to 10 numbers from 1 to 70, and the prize structure changes with how many numbers you choose. The first prize starts at KRW 25,000,000 and the maximum prize is KRW 1,000,000,000, the largest cap on the site; first-prize odds are 1 in 613,480.2⁴.

Mega Bingo costs KRW 1,000 per game and draws every 8 minutes, with 49 numbers drawn from a pool of 75. You choose 24 numbers, and prizes depend on how many match and the pattern on your bingo board. The first prize (Blackout) starts at KRW 10,000,000 plus alpha, is capped at KRW 200,000,000, and carries odds of 1 in 407,856.6. Lower tiers pay KRW 100,000 (Frame, 1/2,553.7), KRW 10,000 (Diamond, 1/283.1), KRW 3,000 (X, 1/37.4), KRW 2,000 (Y, 1/14.4) and KRW 1,000 (Bar, 1/5.7), with overall odds of 1 in 3.6⁸.

For more detail on the draw games, see Powerball in South Korea and Speed Kino.

Payout rates: from 58.2% to 64.8% of sales

Each game returns a fixed share of sales as prizes, and the operator publishes the figure for every game. The spread across the electronic lineup runs from 58.2% to 64.8% of sales.

• Speed Kino: 58.2% of sales, the lowest of the draw games⁴
• Powerball: 60.0% of sales⁹
• Mega Bingo: 60.0% of sales⁸
• Triple Luck: 60.0% of sales²
• Catch Me: 60.0% of sales in total, including a bonus game that pays out 9.6% of sales¹⁰
• Treasure Hunter: 64.7% of sales across all prize tiers, the most generous of the instant games³

Within each game, the payout rate is also broken down by tier. In Triple Luck, the first prize accounts for 13.3% of sales, the second prize 5.3%, the third 1.7% and the fourth 1.3%². In Mega Bingo, the small Bar tier alone accounts for 17.4% of sales, which tells you where the money actually flows: most winners take the KRW 1,000 tiers, and the headline prizes are rare by design⁸.

Purchase limits: KRW 100,000 per game, KRW 150,000 combined per day

The limits work at three levels, and it helps to keep them straight.

Per game, per day: each game has its own daily cap of KRW 100,000 per person. That applies to Triple Luck, Treasure Hunter, Powerball, Speed Kino and Mega Bingo alike². Catch Me is slightly different at the transaction level: up to 5 games (KRW 5,000) per person per transaction¹.

Across the instant games combined: when you add up purchases of Powerball, Speed Kino, Mega Bingo, Triple Luck, Treasure Hunter, Double Jack Midas and Catch Me, the total cannot exceed KRW 100,000 per person per day².

Across the whole site: the Donghaeng Lottery website allows a combined KRW 150,000 of purchases per day across all products, within each product's own limit². The deposit system matches this: you can charge your account with up to KRW 150,000 per day, whether by quick charge or virtual account deposit⁵.

In the draw games there are also per-purchase rules. In Powerball and Mega Bingo you can spend up to KRW 100,000 in a single purchase, and in both Powerball and Speed Kino you can buy up to 10 tickets with the same numbers in one purchase⁹. Powerball also lets you reserve the same numbers or section for the current round plus 1 to 4 future rounds⁹.

Sales hours and how draws are scheduled

Most of the electronic games share the same sales window: purchases are open from 6 a.m. to midnight, every day of the week, based on the company's server time, and sales stop outside those hours⁹. Mega Bingo follows the same 6 a.m. to midnight schedule⁸, and Catch Me is open daily from 6:00 AM to midnight¹.

The two instant games are more generous. Triple Luck and Treasure Hunter are purchasable 24 hours a day, though the site notes that sales hours can change under Article 5 of the site terms and conditions².

Draw scheduling is what gives the draw games their rhythm:

• Powerball and Speed Kino: a new draw every 5 minutes, whenever sales are open⁹
• Mega Bingo: a new draw every 8 minutes, with 49 numbers drawn each time⁸
• Powerball results: winning numbers are published in batches three times a day rather than round by round, at the times listed above⁹

The instant games need no schedule at all: the moment you buy, you scratch and the ticket resolves itself, with Treasure Hunter auto-checking after 60 seconds if you hesitate³.

How to check results and claim prizes

For the instant games, checking is part of the game: you see the result on screen the moment you scratch. For the draw games, results appear on the Donghaeng Lottery website after each draw, and Powerball numbers come out in the three daily batches mentioned earlier⁹.

Claiming prizes depends on the amount, and the electronic games are the easiest of Korea's lotteries in this respect because everything runs through your site account⁷:

• KRW 50,000 or less: deposited straight into your deposit account⁷
• Over KRW 50,000 and under KRW 10,000,000: deposited into your deposit account once your identity verification is complete⁷
• KRW 10,000,000 or more: after identity verification, you visit Donghaeng Lottery Co. in person, confirm your identity and withdraw the prize⁷

The operator's own guidance adds that prizes in the online instant games, including Powerball, Speed Kino, Mega Bingo, Triple Luck, Treasure Hunter, Double Jack Midas and Catch Me, are paid automatically to the deposit account once real-name verification is complete¹¹. The English-language site likewise notes that prizes under KRW 2,000,000 in games such as Catch Me are automatically credited to your balance the following day¹.

If you run into trouble, the Donghaeng Lottery helpline operates Monday to Friday and Sunday from 6 a.m. to midnight, and Saturday from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.¹².

For the tax side of larger wins, see tax on gambling winnings in South Korea, and for the wider picture of legal play, see gambling in South Korea.