Online Casinos in South Korea

Online gambling in South Korea in brief

South Korea does not license online casinos. Casino games are operated inside the country at 17 land-based casinos, but the state offers no licensing process for online casinos, so there is no Korean-registered online casino to play at¹. What exists instead is a large offshore market: international sites, licensed elsewhere, that accept Korean players, run Korean-language lobbies and live dealer tables, and in many cases let you deposit and withdraw in Korean won or Bitcoin².

The practical picture is therefore split:

• Legal, on land: casinos (for foreigners, plus one exception), horse racing, cycle racing, motorboat racing, the lottery, sports promotion betting tickets and bullfighting⁵
• Prohibited, online: internet gambling, plus hwatu (Korean flower cards), poker and adult game rooms⁵

For a visitor, the difference matters less than you might think: the foreigner-only casinos are open to you with a passport, and offshore sites generally accept you too. For a resident, the online side carries real legal risk, and the rest of this page sets out what exists, how it works, and where the lines are drawn.

What is legal and what is not

The Korea Cycling Association's own responsible-gambling FAQ draws the line plainly, and the Korea Boat Racing Association's FAQ lists the same split⁵. Here is the full picture in one table:

So the legal forms are all state-run or state-supervised, land-based products. The South Korea lottery, Sports Toto, horse racing, cycle racing and motorboat racing each have their own pages on this site with prices, draw days and how to play. Lotteries run by private operators and bingo are prohibited as speculative activities, and real-money betting outside the licensed products is not allowed¹.

Online gambling sits entirely on the illegal side of that line for anyone inside the country. It is prohibited even though some land-based gambling is legal, and the prohibition is enforced rather than ignored³.

Who the ban applies to

The ban on online gambling applies to Korean citizens wherever they are in practice, and the authorities have made it clear that those caught gambling online can face penalties³. The Criminal Act backs this up: gambling as a Korean citizen is punishable by fines of up to KRW 20 million or up to three years in prison³.

Foreign visitors and foreign residents are in a different position when it comes to the land-based casinos, which are built for them. But the online prohibition is written broadly, and no offshore site is licensed in Korea, so nothing on the online side is state-sanctioned for anyone.

For citizens, the one land-based exception is Kangwon Land. It is the only casino in the country open to both Korean nationals and foreigners, and the largest⁸. Its operator also runs entry limits for citizens:

• More than 15 visits a month for two consecutive months, or more than 30 days per quarter for two consecutive quarters, triggers a refusal of entry
• First violation: one-month entry refusal
• Second violation: two-month entry refusal
• Third violation: permanent entry ban⁷

Offshore casinos that accept Korean players

Despite the prohibition, a substantial offshore market serves Korean players. Casino review sites list hundreds of casinos that accept players from the Republic of Korea, including more than 40 that accept Bitcoin, and the number of Bitcoin-friendly options found in filtered searches runs into the hundreds². These are international operators licensed in jurisdictions such as Curacao, Malta and Gibraltar, not Korean companies¹.

What you find on them is much the same as anywhere else. Many international online casinos offer live dealer options for Korean players, including live blackjack, roulette, baccarat, poker, game shows and live bingo¹. Korean-language options and support for the South Korean won make gameplay and transactions easier at casinos that cater to Asian markets¹.

A few names give a sense of the market:

If you want the wider picture of legal gambling in the country, start with Gambling in South Korea. As for what these offshore sites themselves say, BC.GAME lists slots, live dealer tables, crash and original games, sports betting with pre-match and in-play odds, poker, horse racing, lottery, pachinko, fishing and table games, with one wallet across casino and sportsbook and 24/7 support¹⁴. Stake, for its part, accepts bets only online, holds deposited funds and winnings in separate customer bank accounts or crypto wallets, and reserves the right to run additional KYC checks on any withdrawal.

Payments: won, bank transfers, e-wallets and Bitcoin

Payment methods at offshore casinos serving South Korea are the ones Koreans already use: bank transfers, e-wallets and cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin or Ethereum¹. Korean won is supported as an account currency at some major sites, with Korean players able to make deposits and withdrawals in KRW at Stake¹⁰, and many casinos catering to Asian markets offering KRW as an option¹.

Bitcoin is the standout. It is offered across every second, if not every single, online casino that caters to South Korean players, and more than 40 sites targeting Korean players accept it². PayPal is also an option across most, if not all, online casinos that cater to South Korean players².

Before your first deposit at a site like Stake, you complete identity verification and enable local currency payments in your wallet. Accepted ID documents include:

• A passport (front page only)
• A national ID (both sides)
• A driver's license (both sides)¹⁰

Two withdrawal rules worth knowing from Stake's terms: you need to wager 100% of the value of your deposit before requesting a fiat or crypto withdrawal, and the site may charge a fee on withdrawals at its discretion, with third-party commissions and processing fees the player's responsibility¹⁵. Withdrawals go to a payment addressed to you, a bank account in your name, or the stated cryptocurrency wallet address, and the operator reserves the right to run additional KYC checks on any withdrawal¹⁵. Our Gambling Payments in South Korea page covers the practical side in more depth.

VPNs and location checks

Casino listing pages detect your location and prefilter what they show. If you are using a VPN or other masking technology that makes it appear as if you are not in South Korea, you will need to reset the filters by choosing "South Korea" from the dropdown list of countries to see what is actually available to you¹⁴.

This is a display issue, not a legal one. A VPN changes which offers a comparison site shows you; it does not change your legal position, which depends on who you are (citizen, resident or visitor) and where you physically are. Some operators also geo-block: BC.GAME, for example, shows visitors from restricted regions a notice that it does not accept players from their region under its gaming license¹⁶.

Safer gambling tools at offshore sites

The offshore operators that accept Korean players carry the standard responsible-gambling tools, and they are worth knowing about before you deposit.

At Stake, you can set:

• Deposit limits
• Wager limits
• Loss limits
• Cooling-off periods and breaks in play
• Self-exclusion

Closing your account means contacting customer support¹⁷. BC.GAME's terms offer self-exclusion that locks your account for a minimum of six months with no promotional material sent, plus a 7-day cooling-off period, and require players to be of legal gambling age in their jurisdiction, at least 18¹⁶. BC.GAME also uses provably fair systems and an audited RNG to protect every bet¹⁶.

For help inside Korea, the state gambling operators run clinics and support services, and our Gambling Help in South Korea and Self-Exclusion and Entry Limits in South Korea pages explain what exists and how to use it.

The legal alternative: casinos you can walk into

If you want to gamble legally in person, South Korea has 17 casinos, of which 16 admit foreigners only¹⁸. These foreigner-only venues require a passport and bar Korean nationals¹⁹. The biggest names include Paradise Casino Walkerhill, Seven Luck Casino, Inspire Casino and Resort in Incheon, the casinos in Jeju and the casinos in Busan; the full list is on our Casinos in South Korea page.

The exception is Kangwon Land Casino at High1 Resort in Jeongseon, Gangwon Province. It is the only casino in Korea granting admission to both Korean and foreign visitors, and Korean visitors pay a KRW 9,000 admission fee that foreign passport holders are exempt from⁴. It is the country's only and largest casino open to nationals⁸, and it exists because the Tourism Promotion Act bars Korean residents from every other licensed casino¹. The law is explicit: casino operators must not allow Korean nationals to enter, with the exception of overseas emigrants under the Overseas Emigration Act²⁰.

One quirk of the foreigner-only venues: at Paradise City in Incheon, the hotel, shops and restaurants are open to Korean residents, and only the casino floor itself is foreigners-only²¹. And if you lose your foreign-resident status through naturalization or restoration of Korean nationality, you are no longer allowed to enter; you must inform the casino operator, and entering without notice leaves you open to civil or criminal liability²².

Age and ID

Casino entry across South Korea is restricted to persons aged 19 and over, and casinos check nationality with a passport at the door¹⁹. The documents depend on who you are:

The first two rows come from Paradise Casino's entry rules²³, the third from Kangwon Land's admission policy²⁴.

Offshore sites state their own minimums, usually 18 plus the legal gambling age in your jurisdiction¹⁶, but inside South Korea the practical rule for any licensed venue is 19. Our Gambling Age in South Korea page covers the details, and Gambling in South Korea as a Visitor explains the entry rules for tourists in full.