In a bid to convincingly enforce crypto regulations in its national policies, South Korea has intensified its Crackdown on crypto-facilitated illegal activities in its nation.
The Asian country is working vigorously with local and international regulators to unravel crypto scams and catch the different masterminds responsible for them.
South Korean authorities have been marginally successful in their hunting activity. They have successfully retrieved many of their citizens’ lost funds and refunded them, but a challenging case has truncated the government’s efforts.
Korea has failed to unravel a significant phishing scam enacted in 2017 and will now utilize external resources from the United States to apprehend the culprits.
Earlier today, regulators in Seoul, Korea’s capital city, have revealed that they are in a partnership with United States authorities to investigate the 2017 incident.
The USA And South Korea’s Collaboration
The partnership that will see South Korea utilize resources from the United States isn’t the first occurrence of such nature.
Earlier in 2018, the Korean government bid to narrow down its suspect list. Its Supreme Prosecutors Office (SPO) had effectively utilized intelligence provided by the United State’s Federal Bureau Of Investigation (FBI).
The partnership then allowed Korea’s prosecutors to confirm the Japanese identity of one of the confirmed suspects.
In the investigation process and results released by the country’s prosecuting office release in 2017, they revealed that the then alleged culprits were responsible for the theft of unique IDs and relevant passwords of South Korean and Japanese victims that accessed their Ripple mirrored phishing website. The phishing scam reportedly ran for over seven months, from June 2017 onwards.
The authorities further claimed that the suspects stole funds worth 900 million Won as of 2017, which is now equivalent to 2.35 billion Won.
Summarily the investigation publication reported that the investigation success significantly leveraged the intelligence provided by the United State’s FBI, which prompted the SPO to issue concise and relevant orders to its Eastern District Prosecutors Office that led to the arrest of the suspects.
The new partnership announcement by the US and South Korea looks to mirror their previous success.
The SPO has successfully refunded liquid funds of approximately 140 million Won, equivalent to $118,000 to some defrauded citizens.
Crypto Regulations In South Korea
Regulators and regulatory bodies in South Korea are consistently revising and evolving its crypto regulations framework by either upgrading or downgrading specific guidelines it contains to make the framework more comprehensive in its coverage.
The constant improvement and development of the country’s crypto regulations can be attributed to its aim of being a global leader in the industry’s regulations space.
Earlier this December, Korea updated its Anti-Money-Laundering (AML) policy and Combat Financing Terrorism (CFT) policy that resulted in the temporary closure of a couple hundred small and medium crypto exchanges.
The new law seeks to abolish withdrawals by non-KYC compliant wallet owners from exchanges based in the country. In essence, it aims to ban all anonymous crypto transactions in its Defi sector.
