South Korea has approved a telecom-level system designed to block illegal spam and smishing messages before they are sent.

The Personal Information Protection Commission said Friday it had cleared a new “spam number filtering system” that checks mass-text requests against a database of valid and invalid phone numbers.

The platform, built by the science ministry and the Korea Telecommunications Operators Association, intercepts bulk messages sent from spoofed, inactive or unassigned numbers often used in financial scams.

Authorities say more than half of all mass texts last year were illegal spam, prompting a push to verify the validity of phone numbers before delivery.

Regulators said the system may use only number-status data for spam prevention and must comply strictly with privacy rules, noting that phone numbers constitute personal information.

The commission also urged the government to formally define the association’s role in law or regulation to ensure accountability for the new system's operation.