How much Lotto winning is enough? Koreans say 5.2b won

People line up to buy Lotto 6/45 tickets in Seoul on Jan. 1. (Yonhap)

A recent report showed that South Koreans, on average, think a jackpot of 5.2 billion won ($3.55 million) is sufficient for South Korea's largest lottery game operated by the state-run Korea Lottery Commission.

The Korea Institute of Public Finance surveyed 5,000 Koreans aged 19-64 in 2025 to determine how satisfied they were with the Lotto 6/45 jackpot.

Nearly 33 percent of respondents said they were not satisfied. Of these, about 92 percent said the winnings should be larger.

The average amount respondents cited as appropriate for first place was 5.22 billion won, a significant jump from the 2.89 billion won recorded in 2024. About 65.6 percent of the respondents said the jackpot should be at least 3 billion won.

Korean Lotto tickets are sold at 1,000 won per game, and the average first-place prize is around 2 billion won. This goes down to 1.3 billion won after taxes, falling short of the average price of an apartment in Seoul: 1.5 billion won, according to KB Real Estate's December report.

Of the respondents who had not bought a Lotto ticket in the past year, 30.2 percent said they would buy one if the jackpot was increased. About 27 percent of those who had bought Lotto tickets said they would buy more in such a case.

"Raising the winnings (for Lotto) will have substantial effects on sustaining or increasing the money spent on Lotto for the group that's already buying, while encouraging non-buyers to buy the tickets and vitalizing the Lotto market," the KIPF said in a report submitted to the Ministry of Economy and Finance.