South Korean Politicians Approve Tough AML Regulations for Crypto

So, everyone knows the dollar's legit in South Korea, right? Well, now the lawmakers have decided to hit crypto exchanges with some heavy new rules. They just amended the Financial Information Law to ramp up the fight against money laundering and terrorism financing for virtual asset service providers. It's a big deal for the crypto scene over there.

This goes to show how serious and determined the South Koreans are when it comes to combatting money laundering and other nefarious activities being done with the help of cryptocurrencies. They are actually doing thinga to improve the standard of trading and security so as to prevent criminals from perusing crypto to launder money within their region. Also, the steps they are taking are in no way deterring serious market players to come inside of their country and do their business there, and is actually a challenge to improve services and the way how businesses handle their thing.

Interesting, instead of the usual route taken by any government of a country when they say "enhanced" or "improved" regulations and laws for AML procedures it only means a harder method of KYC or something unusual for their clients. This time it is the other way around where the VASPs are the ones being enforced on specific regulations when it comes to their licensing, operations, and how they will handle deposits in withdrawals. Honestly with this kind of "enhanced" regulations made by South Korea it makes me wonder why other countries are not doing it and instead put the burden on all of its users, as if they are forcing them to lose interest in the market.

I admire how serious South Korea is in combatting money laundering and terrorism. It's a good example of a government and it's care to his people's security. Global AML is really one thing to be considered by the globe to avoid Money Laundering too. I remember the news in our country where the Chinese nationals were using bitcoin to clean their dirty money to avoid taxes. But our country made an immediate action to monitor and confirm if the transactions are legit and fully documented for taxes, and found out that the transactions were there to save the money from taxes. The Chinese nationals who did the transactions are now banned from our country and then 6 months after the incident, their names showed on the national news again and their money was being kept in a hotel. People will always find ways to hide their hard ^ earned money.

Probably because of this: Increased spending on compliance will also trickle down to consumers, so it's not all good. It's great for casual users though, since it does look like this will help stop scam exchanges from setting up camp.

Absolutely! Usually the AML and KYC laws are seen negatively by the crypto community because it doesn't go with the initial idea of cryptocurrencies. But we also need to understand that cryptos can be very easily used by the criminals because of its pseudo-anonymous nature and it's not a myth. We already have silk route as an example! I am glad that South Korea is trying to bring regulation instead of imposing a blanket ban. It would have been much easier for them, but they are taking the pain to regulate it and trying to bring confidence back in the market. Such kind of regulation would not make legal players worried, but would keep criminals outside the market.

Japan so far has had the most rigourous regulation and as far as I know forced security checks and practices on exchanges. That hasn't stopped some of the most epic hacks happening in Japan, though the biggest was Coincheck and they weren't properly regulated. I hope they've recruited the right people who sign off on their security practices and know all the tricks inside out rather than some clueless civil servant.

I know that Japan has one of the most strict screening process out there but thing is their screening process on crypto exchanges are more focused on the liquidity/financial health of the company running the exchanges as well as how these companies will be implementing the KYC/AML procedures they required to them before they get licensed. The FSA's screening process might be pointed more on how a crypto exchange can run fully operational rather than the security of it's platform so maybe that is the reason why hacks are still happening in Japanese crypto exchanges.