Pyeongtaek City Sends Penalties for Uninsured Vehicles via Text Message

[Suwon Ilbo=Seo Dong-young] Pyeongtaek Vehicle Registration Office announced on the 15th that it will implement 'mobile electronic notification (SMS) service for administrative fines regarding non-compliance with mandatory vehicle and construction machinery insurance' starting January this year.

The mobile electronic notification (SMS) service is a service in which public institutions, in cooperation with credit information companies and telecommunications carriers, send notification text messages to the mobile phones of vehicle owners who are subscribers to the three major telecom companies.

The notification content includes notice of expiration of periodic inspection periods, notices to encourage mandatory insurance enrollment, preliminary fine notices, final assessments, demand notices, and overdue payment notices.

Upon completion of identity verification, recipients can view the notification text or fine notice through a link.

Until now, notices such as inspection period expiration alerts were sent via registered mail or regular mail. However, due to recipient absence, non-residence, and other reasons, notifications often failed to reach recipients, or even when delivered, citizens frequently missed them due to busy daily schedules, resulting in many being unaware of their imposed fines or overdue payments. Additionally, there were difficulties confirming phone numbers, making text message transmission impossible.

Through the mobile electronic notification service, the city expects to encourage timely periodic inspections and mandatory insurance enrollment, and to promptly notify citizens of fines for faster payment, thereby reducing the economic burden on residents caused by surcharges (up to 75%) resulting from non-payment, while maximizing business efficiency.

However, since text messages will not be sent to subscribers of budget mobile phone plans, owners of 2G phones manufactured before 2008, and corporations, postal delivery will continue to be used in parallel.