Bitcoin Enters Party Politics in South Korea – Trustnodes
A relatively young South Korean lawmaker, Kim Nam-kuk, from the Democratic Party invested 6 billion won ($4.5 million) in Wemix, a crypto token from South Korean game developer Wemade.
That act alone is now a mini-scandal in South Korea where the spokesperson for the current ruling People Power Party, Yoo Sang-bum, said:
“The audience is shocked by his ambivalent attitude and attempt to gain sympathy by highlighting his cheap shoes, even though he had crypto assets worth 6 billion won.”
Korean media claim Nam-kuk has been campaigning to be frugal, and they also point out that he declared a net worth of 1.2 billion won when his crypto holdings are 5 times that amount. Nam-kuk says there is no requirement to declare the crypto holdings.
Additionally, the ruling party claims he sold the coins last March, shortly before the introduction of the real-name cryptocurrency transaction system called the Travel Rule.
Nam-kuk states that he did not sell them, but transferred them to another exchange. The unnamed exchange reported him for reasons unknown to the Korea Financial Intelligence Unit, which in turn passed it on to prosecutors.
However, there is no public evidence or even allegations of illegal activity. Fairer politics in that Nam-kuk apparently claims he doesn’t even use hotels to save money, yet the ruling party says he invests in crypto.
His other crime is that he proposed a bill in 2021 with a group of other Democratic Party lawmakers to delay the taxation of crypto gains.
However, the People Power Party (PPP) does not seem to be anti bitcoin. In fact, the current South Korean president from the PPP, Yoon Suk-Yeol, promised during the election campaign to even allow ICOs.
But the overall regulatory regime in South Korea is restrictive by global standards as exchanges must work with a local bank and investors also need linked local bank accounts, which has created Kimchi Premium.
The country embraced crypto in 2017 following the ban on crypto exchanges in China, and has been significant to this market ever since.
Making this party political spat is a strange development, as in some ways crypto seems to be more of a background issue to the usual football politics, and in other ways it could highlight the consequences of this restrictive regulation as the ruling party now accuses a lawmaker from the opposition based on what is usually private information that they got from the crypto exchange.
It raises privacy concerns because of this one-sided window on sensitive matters that could be abused as Nam-kuk says he was only investing.
“I borrowed and did not receive money from anyone at all (for the crypto trade),” Nam-kuk said. “I sold some of my shares to use for the first crypto investment. I also transacted only through real name accounts and I can share all transaction records transparently.”
