A recent political scandal has encouraged the offer of legislation intended to ensure South Korean officials report all digital asset holdings above approximately $760.
South Korean officials newly approved an offer to amend the country’s Public Service Ethics Act to include virtual assets, including cryptocurrency.
Presently, government officials must report stocks, bonds, jewelry, gifted memberships, and different holdings worth additional than 1 million Korean won — roughly $760 — but no similar disclosure is necessitated for digital assets under existing South Korean law.
The offer comes in the wake of a scandal involving Kim Nam-kuk, a former member of the South Korean Democratic Party. Kim’s been accused of cashing out further than $4.5 a million in cryptocurrency last year ahead of a change in the law that would have limited similar exercises.
Related: South Korean authorities raid Upbit, Bithumb crypto exchanges after a political scandal
In response to the allegations, Kim claims he wasn’t needed to disclose activities surrounding his digital assets and that he never liquidated his holdings which reportedly amounted to roughly 800,000 Wemix coins ($4.5 million) — but simply transferred them to another exchange. Kim subsequently left the South Korean Democratic Party to come self-dependent as he mustered his defense.
The South Korean government has reacted by drafting an amendment to the existing law that would roll digital assets similar to cryptocurrency into legislation requiring disclosing different assets.
Per a translation of a government notice concerning the offered amendment provided by Google Translate:
“Recently, it was found that an active member of the National Assembly has a large amount of virtual assets, but it is missing from the disclosure details of the lawmaker’s property, which is pointed out as a loophole in the law.”
The amendment was proposed and approved by a subcommittee on May 19. According to the document, it'll be submitted for an ultimate vote in a plenary session on May 25.
South Korean lawmakers have occupied in a flurry of activity surrounding the regulation of cryptocurrencies and related assets since the May 2022 collapse of Luna and the Terra blockchain. This includes a sweeping cryptocurrency regulatory package proposed in April 2023 that would seek to impose harsher penalties for related crimes with raised fines and rulings ranging between a year and life in prison.
(TRISTAN GREENE, Cointelegraph, 2023)