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: In 2020, one fifth of the adolescents in South Korea suffered from gambling. Due to the high rates of smartphone use in South Korea, Korean adolescents are familiar with digital devices, which makes them easily gamble online. However, online gambling is illegal. Moreover, due to the importance of peer culture and sense of belonging to peer network among adolescents, online gambling among adolescents easily leads them to addiction. They are even willing to commit crimes. Online gambling addiction has become a serious social problem in South Korea. Not to mention the negative impact of online gambling addiction on adolescents’ development according to previous studies, problematic online gambling among adolescents is likely get exposed to fraud, theft, assault, and prostitution. Despite the considerable association between online gambling addiction and related crimes, however, research on the association is scarce. Thus, the research question of this study is as follows: What are the types and causes of gambling-related crimes? How and within what social contexts the problematic online gambling leads to gambling-related crimes?
Method: Study conducted intensive interviews with adolescents aged 13-18, who were addicted to online gambling and has experienced gambling-related crimes. Interviews are ongoing. Up to date, we completed interviews with 9 adolescents. Most of them were interviewed multiple times(prolonged engagement). Participants were recruited through the Youth Delinquency Prevention Center by reputational and snowball sampling method. This proposal reports preliminary results based on the interviews with 9 adolescent participants. We will continue interviews up to saturation point. We analyzed our initial data using Atlas-ti.
Result: According to preliminary results, the types of gambling-related crimes included theft, fraud, drinking, prostitute, and school violence. Moreover, losing money was the main cause of committing a crime. For instance, many participants responded that they were forced to commit a crime to pay back the money they borrowed at a high interest rate. Lastly, authentic Korean culture emphasizing education was an important socio-cultural context. Korean adolescents tend to spend the longest hours studying in the world: they have shown high academic stress and tried to find ways to relieve their stress in a short time. Online gambling was very useful for relieving stress. Another characteristic includes the peer culture in South Korea. The participants responded that if they refuse to gamble online or to commit a crime, they can be a target of school violence.
Conclusion and Implication: Present study conducted a case study on gambling-related crimes of problematic online gambling among Korean adolescents. Participants were not aware of the illegality of online gambling, which emphasizes school-based preventive education among Korean adolescents. Moreover, the results of this study suggest that online gambling intervention should focus on adolescent’s social contexts to prevent problematic online addiction and related crimes. That is, focusing on peer network is crucial and the network is a keypoint of adolescent crime. Therefore, this study recommends that follow-up studies should focus on these criminal adolescent’s network and be conducted.