In a dramatic turnaround, the South Korean parliament, the National Assembly, has voted in favor of the country’s first cryptocurrency-specific legislation in the past few hours. (Updated at 10:20 UTC: updates throughout the entire text).

The amended Special Financial Transactions Information Act, which was approved by a National Assembly finance committee in November last year, will effectively create a framework for the country’s cryptocurrency industry.

The South Korean cryptocurrency industry has reacted positively to the news.

Simon Kim, the CEO of Seoul-based blockchain incubator Hashed, told Cryptonews.com,

“There has been great uncertainty regarding regulations in cryptocurrency in South Korea until now. However, with the new law, cryptocurrency has been officially classified as an asset class by the institutions and virtual asset operators are able to operate under proper law in Korea. I believe this is a strong, positive signal for South Korea moving forward and proving itself as the perfect testbed for blockchain and cryptocurrency on the global scene.”

Meanwhile, IT journalist Janet Cho told Cryptonews.com,

“All of the big South Korean companies involved in blockchain have been championing this amendment, and now they’ve got exactly what they wanted. The ball’s now in their court. How they, and other companies that have possibly been keeping their cryptocurrency plans secret, react in the next few weeks and months will be very telling indeed.”

And blockchain consultant Mira Kim also spoke to Cryptonews.com, saying,

“This is great news. OK, nobody will actually welcome taxes and regulations, but a lack of legitimacy is what was holding investors and big companies back. In a year, that will be gone. Now it’s a fair fight against the conventional finance industry. Game on!”

The crypto-specific portions of the bill are largely based on the G7’s FATF guidelines about how governments should police what it terms as virtual asset service providers (VASPs) – namely crypto exchanges and brokerages.


Per multiple media reports, including Maeil Kyungjae, the house voted unequivocally in favor of the bill, with 182 votes for, zero against and no abstentions.