Comtrue Technologies, a company specializing in wireless communications, said Tuesday that upon checking emails from its clients, Spam email percentages skyrocketed to higher than 80 percent this month from just above the 60 percent range in 2002 and below 50 percent in 2001. Moreover, of the remaining 20 percent of emails, 10 percent carried computer viruses. Comtrue said that normal emails only took up 10 percent of all emails.

Companies are by law required to attach the sign “advertisement” or “@” on Spam email titles, but only 17 percent of them follow this regulation, said Comtrue.

Park No-hyun, CEO and chairman of Comtrue, said that compared to foreign countries where Spam emails take up about 60 percent of all emails, the Spam email percentage in Korea is one of the highest in the world.

(Woo Byeong-hyun, penman@chosun.com )