North Korea’s Samhung Electronic Wallet smartphone app now offers mobile lottery tickets with payouts worth tens of millions of North Korean won.
Users can purchase simple number-based lottery tickets similar to South Korea’s “Lotto,” as well as sports betting options resembling “Sports Toto,” where players predict the outcomes of overseas sporting events.
Daily NK discovered these features while analyzing a copy of the app’s database, which regularly announces lottery results. The lottery offerings include “Sports Event Lottery” and “Sports Number Lottery,” with the Sports Event Lottery providing the highest payouts.
A March 1, 2023 notification in the app’s database revealed: “In the 16th Sports Event Lottery, conducted amid great hopes and interest from countless Sports Lottery enthusiasts, contestant [mobile identification number 1323622531] — who purchased a single ticket — won a top prize of 46,697,268 won.”
Based on Pyongyang’s market exchange rate at the time ($1 = 8,280 won), this prize was worth approximately $5,640. Another notification from March 17, 2023 showed that users can purchase multiple tickets, with one contestant buying 15 tickets to win the top prize.
Winners receive their prize money through their Jonsong Card — a debit card linked to a cash account — or directly into their Samhung e-wallet. However, Daily NK has not yet confirmed details about the lottery’s operational structure, including how draws are conducted and what percentage the state takes from ticket sales.
Betting on global sports despite information controls
The “Sports Number Lottery” operates like South Korea’s “Lotto,” with payouts determined by how many numbers match. According to the app’s database, players win the top prize when the final five numbers of their seven-digit ticket match the winning numbers. For instance, if someone buys ticket number 2345678 and the winning number is 45678, they claim the jackpot.
While other prize tiers weren’t detailed, the app likely awards second prize for four matching numbers and third prize for three matches. Players can either manually select their numbers or have them generated automatically.
Daily NK also found a “Football Lottery” similar to South Korea’s “Sports Toto,” allowing users to bet on real football match results. A February 29, 2023 notification described it as “a regular event over football matches” where users can bet on “wins, combined wins and goals, Q&As, odds and rankings.”
Gamblers can wager on North Korea’s domestic football league matches, but also on international tournaments like the World Cup and top overseas leagues including England’s Premier League and Spain’s La Liga.
This reveals a striking contradiction: North Korean authorities use various overseas sports events for gambling activities while simultaneously guarding against the entry of outside information into the country.
