News writer
A jackpot should bring celebration, but in South Korea, it's stirring up suspicion. The latest DongHang Lottery drawing featured an ultra-rare all-20s winning combination — so rare, in fact, that it should only happen once every 745 years.
Add that to a recent case of two winning tickets sold at the same store, and players are questioning whether the system is as random as it claims to be. Officials insist the game is fair, but online chatter suggests many aren't buying it.
The latest scandal
On Saturday, March 8, 2025, the winning numbers for the 1162nd DongHang Lottery draw were announced. Those winning numbers happened to be 20, 21, 22, 25, 28, and 29, plus a bonus number of 6.
For this draw game, players pick six different numbers between 1 and 45. However, all of the winning numbers for this drawing happened to fall within the 20s.
According to lottery officials, there were 36 people that matched all six of the winning numbers, splitting the first-prize money. That meant each of the winners would take home 823,931,021 won, which is about $567,000 USD.
Of those 36 winners, officials said 23 of them chose their numbers themselves, 11 used automatically generated numbers, and two used a semi-automatic selection system.
A rare set of winning numbers
With this unusual set of winning numbers, players started questioning the legitimacy of the draw. In the standard 6/45 lottery for South Korea, there are 8.15 million sets of six numbers that could be drawn. Of those sets of six numbers, only 210 of them have all six numbers in the 20s.
Based on that, you could expect to see an all-20s draw about once every 38,786 drawings — or about 0.0026 percent of the time. The South Korean lottery is drawn once per week, so you might statistically expect to see an all-20s drawing about once every 745 years.
While this rare winning combination has players questioning things online, lottery officials said state-run lottery operator DongHang Lottery denies any fraud took place. Officials said every draw is broadcast live and it undergoes strict inspections of machines and balls before the official announcement.
This chatter has been going on for a while, and DongHang Lottery actually invited 100 randomly selected observers — they normally only have 20 observers — to watch a live drawing in the studio back in November 2024. However, that chatter continues today.
The first scandal
The other scandal that has happened in recent weeks that has players questioning the South Korean lottery system was when two winning jackpot tickets were sold at the same store.
During the DongHang Lottery drawing for March 1, 2025, there were 16 people that picked the winning numbers for that draw. Seeming the drawing mentioned above had 36 winners, the fact that 16 people won during this draw isn't the issue.
The issue that got people talking online was that two of those 16 winning tickets happened to be purchased using the lottery's random number generator at a store in Siheung, Gyeonggi Province. While this has happened in California — two Mega Millions jackpot-winning tickets were sold at the same store and now the parties are going through a court battle — people in South Korea are asking if the system is random.
The talk online is that some extra winners may have been added after the drawing actually took place. Social media was buzzing, and they wanted officials to look into a possible cheating scandal, like the current investigations in Texas.
Officials deny the allegations
Despite the talk of people online, lottery officials deny there was any wrongdoing that took place. Officials said all ticket retailers lose connection to the main system 35 minutes before each draw takes place.
Because of that, they say it's impossible for anyone to create more winning tickets after the drawing takes place. They said it’s rare to sell two top-prize winning tickets at the same location, but it's still a possibility that could happen.
Despite the reassurances from lottery officials, players have had these doubts since 2023. Players would like to have the identity of lottery winners to be released, as well as the detailed purchase times for the winning tickets.
There are no plans to update those policies, so for now, conspiracy theories continue to spread online about the lottery system being fair.
Enjoy playing the lottery, and please remember to play responsibly.
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