> You have to have a phone number to sign up for any type of account. (Hasn’t discouraged any toxicity either.)

Note that this isn't just confirming that you have *a* phone number. They check who actually owns the number by phoning the mobile service provider which is tied to the national ID (which encodes date of birth, sex and before 2020, place of birth registration). Online age verification in South Korea is therefore quite effective, since they check the actual age according to the phone subscription (and in turn national ID) rather than just a "please don't lie" button.

Before this it was even worse; they straight up requested the entire national ID (unchangable except after 2017 under very extreme data-leak circumstances, subjective to review) before it became illegal.