Sports betting is legal in South Korea but only if wagered on select sports competitions held locally in the country, using the government’s betting platforms: Sports Toto and Sports Proto. To savvy Korean gamblers, these platforms fail as major toto betting sites.
How Does South Korea’s Sports Toto and Sports Proto Work as Sports Betting Platforms
The government-run Sports Toto offers pari-mutuel betting on the outcomes of selected competitions currently taking place in South Korea. A
side from races, the sporting events may include baseball, football, basketball, volleyball and the likes. Reference to pari-mutuel means all wagers staked on a type of sports competition and on the competing teams are pooled.
The pooled money will then be divided among gamblers who placed their bets on the winning team and allotted in proportion to the size of their wagers. However, the pooled money is reduced because the government takes a portion as its rightful share for being the toto betting site operator.
The Sports Proto on the other hand is regarded as a totomeijeo or 토토메이저. It’s a major toto betting platform because here, gamblers are offered betting odds when placing larger amounts of wagers on outcomes of sporting competitions. While the sporting events included as betting products are the same as those included in Sports Toto, Sports Proto also offers betting odds on KBO eSports League and National Football competitions currently being held outside of South Korea, Here, the government earns commissions deducted from the winnings of lucky sports bettors.
South Koreans Shift to Offshore Sports Betting Platforms as Choice of Major Toto Betting
As advancements in communications and information technology made progress in South Korea, local gamblers found out that they can access offshore-based sport betting platforms with little or no fear of being detected. 
Just by using their laptops, smartphones and mobile betting apps, many Korean gamblers took advantage of staking wagers in offshore sports betting sites. After all, foreign operators offer great returns on a wide range of betting propositions, and on the team that can beat the favorite.
Moreover, the selection of sporting events on which to stake wagers seems endless as the competitions include various sports across the globe. While most Korean gamblers found this gambling option lucrative, the less experienced gamblers fell prey to local sports betting platforms that do not deliver winnings as promised.
Local online gambling operators used agents to collect and pay winnings but were largely exposed to the anti-gambling campaigns of local police authorities.
Nevertheless, some groups of gamblers came together to at least evaluate and review the gambling platforms purporting to be legitimate sports betting sites. Once they have ascertained that a platform offering sports betting products possesses all features that make their operations legitimate, safe and secure, it will be included in a list of recommended major toto betting sites for Korean gamblers.
Generally, such sites are licensed by foreign gambling regulators and with no adverse regulatory issues that have not been resolved. In terms of security, the sites use encryptions when communicating and in sending packets of messages. Additionally, they use the services of virtual private networks (VPNs) in sending the encrypted messages, which makes the messages appear garbled in Korea’s public Internet system.