South Korea - Nanum Lotto

Nanum Lotto

Nanum Lotto, also widely known as Lotto 6/45, is Korea’s main national lottery game.

Draws are held once a week on Saturdays at 20:40 local time, with ticket sales closing at 20:00 on Saturdays and resuming at 06:00 on Sunday morning.

Tickets cost KRW 1,000.

To play, choose six numbers from 1 to 45 or go for an Auto Select for randomly generated numbers. Players can manually choose up to five numbers and then use Auto Select to complete their entry if they can’t decide what numbers to pick!

Nanum Lotto doesn’t have any add-on games, but remains popular because it’s just one of a few lottery games available in Korea.

Jackpot

Nanum Lotto does not advertise a guaranteed minimum jackpot; however, 75% of the total prize pool is set aside for the jackpot.

The Nanum Lotto jackpot can roll over a maximum of three times before the jackpot rolls down to the secondary prize tiers.

The biggest ever Nanum Lotto jackpot was for KRW 85.95 billion in 2003. This jackpot triggered the changing of rollover rules, however, as the lottery operator became concerned that people were spending cash on lottery tickets that they couldn’t afford!

The biggest jackpot since the change is KRW 5.93 billion.

Odds and Prizes

The odds of winning the Nanum Lotto jackpot are 1 in 8,146,060.

Players can win prizes at five different tiers, but despite the huge discrepancy between odds, prizes for the second and third-prize tiers are actually the same! The fourth and fifth tiers both have fixed-prize values.

Payout and Taxes

All prizes are paid out as lump sums.

All winnings are subject to tax, with 22% being levied on prizes under KRW 50 million, and 33% levied on prizes exceeding this amount.

Who Can Play Nanum Lotto?

Players must be at least 19 years of age to buy Nanum Lotto tickets.

Nanum Lotto tickets can be purchased from authorized lottery outlets across Korea, which have been available to residents online since 2018 following a change in online gambling regulations.

Nanum Lotto is not currently available to players from abroad.

History of Nanum Lotto

This game was first launched in 2002 under the name Lotto 6/45, which officially became Narnum Lotto in 2008, although the original name is still widely used.