The number of counterfeit and altered banknotes handed over by investigative agencies to the Bank of Korea (BOK) last year approached 10,000.

According to data provided by the Bank of Korea to Representative Ahn Sang-hun of the People Power Party, a member of the National Assembly's Strategy and Finance Committee, on October 12, the volume of counterfeit and altered banknotes taken over by the BOK last year totaled 9,716, which is about 20 times the 483 recorded in 2024.

In terms of monetary value, it amounted to 476.645 million won, more than 100 times the 4.63 million won recorded in 2024.

The number of seized counterfeit banknotes decreased from 662 in 2021 to 68 in 2022, and remained low at 98 in 2023.

However, after increasing to 483 in 2024, it surged to nearly 10,000 last year.

In particular, 50,000-won banknotes accounted for 9,488 of the counterfeit notes acquired last year, making up 97.7% of the total.

The sharp increase in the acquisition of counterfeit 50,000-won banknotes last year is attributed to a large-scale counterfeit manufacturing case.

In September 2024, in Asan, South Chungcheong Province, a ring was caught attempting to exchange 9,188 counterfeit 50,000-won bills (worth 459.4 million won) produced using color printers for virtual assets.

Meanwhile, posts selling counterfeit money are still openly being uploaded on social media.

As a result of monitoring social media from October 6 to 8 by the lawmaker's office, about 10 posts selling counterfeit money were detected, featuring explicit promotional slogans such as "largest volume of counterfeit bills" and "open 24 hours."

The lawmaker's office stated that the structure allowed anyone to attempt to purchase counterfeit money with just a few clicks by contacting the sellers via Telegram and KakaoTalk accounts listed in the posts.

However, Representative Ahn pointed out that the measures taken by the Bank of Korea, which is in charge of monitoring counterfeit notes, remain at the level of guiding how to identify counterfeit bills, and that its recent countermeasure was merely the overhaul of the "Easy-to-Understand Counterfeit Note Verification" app.

The Bank of Korea spent about 30 million won last year to completely revamp the app, but it has not changed significantly, with only a few additions such as a large font feature and an FAQ menu, and the number of monthly active users (MAU) for one year following the overhaul was found to be an average of seven per day.

About 100 million won has been spent on this app since its development, and several million won goes into maintenance every year.

(Photo provided by Yonhap News TV, Yonhap News)