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According to Bloomberg, South Korea's financial regulatory authorities plan to strengthen the regulation of structured products such as ELS starting next month. They will require brokerages to warn investors when products approach the principal loss trigger line (Knock-in) and to reassess product design and sales when market conditions lead to a significant increase in risk.It is reported that the South Korean stock market has recently experienced significant fluctuations, but retail investors' enthusiasm for high-risk investments has not noticeably cooled. After regulatory tightening on leveraged ETFs for individual stocks, some investments have shifted to stock-linked securities (ELS) that offer high "coupon" rates. Data released by the Korea Financial Investment Association shows that in July, the sales volume of ELS in South Korea reached 35 trillion won, setting a new high in over three years since April 2023, with ELS products based on Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix stocks becoming the main drivers of growth.

The Financial Supervisory Service of Korea submitted data to the National Assembly's Political Affairs Committee today, revealing that as of the end of July, the five major virtual asset exchanges in Korea have registered a total of 6,590 corporate accounts. Bithumb has the highest number of registered corporate accounts, reaching 3,280; the accounts under Upbit operator Dunamu total 2,086. The two major exchanges account for a total of 5,366 corporate accounts, making up 81.4% of the total. In addition, Korbit has 620, Coinone has 539, and Gopax has 65.

According to a report by the Korean News Agency, the Financial Supervisory Service of Korea submitted data to the National Assembly's Political Affairs Committee, revealing that as of the end of July, the five major virtual asset exchanges in Korea (Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Digital Asset Exchange, Gopax) have registered a total of 6,590 corporate accounts.In terms of the distribution of exchanges, Bithumb has the highest number of registered corporate accounts, reaching 3,280; the operator of Upbit, Dunamu, has 2,086 accounts. The two major exchanges account for a total of 5,366 corporate accounts, which is 81.4% of the total. Additionally, Korbit has 620, Coinone has 539, and Gopax has 65.In terms of compliance, there are a total of 711 corporate accounts that have completed customer identity verification (KYC), accounting for 10.8% of all corporate accounts. Among them, Upbit has the most with 290; Bithumb has 199, Korbit has 184, and Coinone and Gopax have 33 and 5, respectively. In terms of the scale of virtual asset holdings, Korean corporate accounts hold approximately 43.377 billion Korean won (about 31.2 million USD), with Upbit having the highest share, holding approximately 27.08 billion Korean won, accounting for 62.4% of the total; Bithumb holds about 6.29 billion Korean won, and Coinone holds about 5.15 billion Korean won. The deposit scale of corporate accounts is approximately 9.13 billion Korean won.

The Korea Exchange (KRX) plans to launch a new type of securities market on November 16, where assets such as artworks, real estate, and music copyrights can be traded through securities accounts like stocks.It is reported that the Korea Exchange is currently advancing the construction of the relevant trading system and the preparation of market participants, and will conduct a 6-week simulation trading period from October 6 to November 13. The official opening time may be adjusted based on the approval progress of the listed products by financial regulatory agencies.After the market opens, investors can buy and sell through securities company accounts, with trading hours consistent with the stock market. Analysts believe that the securities token offering (STO) industry in the Korean market is at a significant turning point. Although the new type of securities to be listed and traded in November will temporarily adopt traditional electronic securities methods for issuance and registration, tokenized securities based on blockchain distributed ledger issuance and management will gradually be implemented after the relevant laws are officially enacted in February 2027.

Factblock CEO and Korea Blockchain Week organizer Andrew Park stated that the South Korean crypto market is shifting from retail-driven trading to institutional digital finance. The focus of global financial institutions and enterprises has shifted from tokens, exchanges, and prices to custody, tokenization, stablecoins, payment settlement infrastructure, and regulatory compliance.The South Korean Financial Services Commission has proposed a framework to open corporate virtual asset accounts to approximately 3,500 listed companies and registered professional investors. The South Korean National Assembly has officially passed amendments to the Electronic Securities Act and the Capital Markets Act, incorporating tokenized real-world assets and security tokens into a unified legal framework.The Bank of Korea has completed the preliminary trial of the Project Hangang real-world deposit token project and plans to conduct the second phase of institutional testing by the end of 2026. Related technical experiments have utilized wholesale deposit tokens to allow AI agents to execute automated conditional trading.

According to News.bitcoin, the Financial Supervisory Service of South Korea has launched a real-time artificial intelligence platform to detect cryptocurrency price manipulation. One of the core functions of this system is its ability to identify short-term price manipulation by referencing a historical database of known market abuse strategies.The Financial Supervisory Service of South Korea will next expand this system to track cross-exchange capital flows and on-chain blockchain activities.

According to Digital Asset, on August 20, members of the Korean National Power Party, including Yoon Tae-yong, proposed an amendment to the Specific Financial Information Act, which aims to grant the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) direct enforcement authority over unreported virtual asset service providers.According to the amendment, anyone can report illegal activities to the FIU. Upon receiving a report or discovering suspected violations, the FIU can initiate investigations and analyses, and refer the case to or notify investigative authorities. The proposal points out that while current laws impose reporting and anti-money laundering obligations on virtual asset service providers, there are no direct enforcement measures against unreported operators, posing risks of money laundering and illegal cross-border transfers, making it difficult to respond quickly relying solely on inter-agency coordination.

According to Cryptopolitan, attackers released malicious versions of three widely used Rust packages through a supply chain attack, with a library named arrayref being used by about three-quarters of Rust development environments. The malicious update hid a backdoor that could automatically steal login information when users compiled projects; users who compiled the affected versions may have exposed their computers and keys.Wiz researchers pointed out that the command and control path of the arrayref attack overlaps with the Mastra operation used by the North Korean hacker groups Sapphire Sleet and UNC1069, with IP addresses sharing the same security certificate and using the same hosting provider, Hostwinds. The attackers only added a misspelled proc-macro1 dependency, mimicking the popular proc-macro2, without modifying the original code, allowing it to pass tests and builds. The attack was removed 86 minutes after release but had already been downloaded extensively. The affected packages are widely used in Solana and Ethereum tools. The Rust team believes the maintainer's actions were not malicious, and their device or credentials may have been compromised.

On August 20, according to the Korea Economic Daily, Samsung Electronics plans to announce a shareholder return plan worth approximately 150 trillion won this month, exceeding the previously reported amount of 100 trillion won. It is expected to include measures such as stock buybacks and special dividends, potentially setting a new historical high for listed companies in South Korea. Industry insiders revealed that Samsung Electronics plans to hold a board meeting this month to review the relevant proposals. Earlier, the market had anticipated that the return scale could reach as high as 200 trillion won, but considering the company's basic principle of using 50% of free cash flow (FCF) for shareholder returns, the final scale is expected to be between 150 trillion and 160 trillion won.Samsung Electronics executives stated that with the recovery of the memory chip industry, the company's cash generation ability has significantly improved. Brokerages expect Samsung Electronics' total free cash flow for this year to be approximately 263 trillion won, and the cumulative free cash flow during the shareholder return policy period from 2024 to 2026 is expected to be around 319 trillion won. Based on a 50% return ratio, the total return funds are about 160 trillion won. After deducting the 39.1 trillion won already executed and planned for execution, the remaining funds are close to 120 trillion won.The market expects that Samsung Electronics may use the remaining funds to add a large-scale special dividend in addition to maintaining the regular dividend of 1,668 won per share each year, and to promote large-scale stock buybacks. Industry insiders indicate that following SK Hynix, Samsung Electronics' launch of a large-scale shareholder return plan may become an important factor in driving the valuation increase of the South Korean stock market.

According to Digital Asset, the South Korean government stated that digital assets held by residents through personal wallets or overseas exchanges, as long as they generate income from transfers or lending, are generally subject to taxation.The digital asset tax will be implemented starting January 1, 2027, taxed as other income, with a deduction of 2.5 million won and a tax rate of 20%, including local taxes up to a maximum of 22%.

Web3 asset data platform RootData has established a strategic partnership with Korea's leading cryptocurrency research institution, Tiger Research.According to the agreement, Tiger Research will fully adopt the API data interface provided by RootData to support its various industry research reports, market insights, and project analyses with underlying data. As a comprehensive data platform, RootData possesses a vast amount of project fundamentals, financing history, team backgrounds, and popularity index metrics. This collaboration will enable Tiger Research's research team to efficiently access structured, high-reliability datasets, significantly enhancing research efficiency and data breadth, thus producing more timely and in-depth analytical results.At the same time, RootData's network of data partners has further expanded, marking the validation of its data services in professional research scenarios. Currently, RootData has accumulated over 220 data partners, becoming one of the important structured data providers in the cryptocurrency industry.

According to a report by the Korean News Agency, global virtual asset infrastructure company BitGo announced that its Korean entity BitGo Korea has received acceptance of its VASP (Virtual Asset Service Provider) registration application from the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) of Korea on August 18, becoming the first foreign cryptocurrency corporate entity to complete VASP registration directly in Korea.BitGo Korea was established in 2024, and this time chose to directly meet regulatory requirements to enter the market, rather than adopting the industry norm of acquiring existing VASP companies. Subsequently, it will use this as a foundation to officially launch virtual asset custody and transfer services in Korea, focusing on expanding business towards financial institutions and corporate clients.

According to a report by China Fund News, data from SEIBro, a subsidiary of the Korea Securities Depository (KSD), shows that as of August 18, the stock that Korean investors bought the most in A-shares over the past month is a mysterious stock.During this period, Korean investors net bought this stock for $45.322233 million (approximately 307.53 million RMB). Extending the timeframe to the past three months, this stock still ranks first in the net purchase list of A-shares by Korean investors. When trading this security, Korean securities firms, as qualified foreign institutional investors (QFI), must submit settlement instructions to KSD. The submission of settlement instructions requires the use of an ISIN code. Therefore, relevant Korean securities firms have chosen to temporarily use a temporary virtual code, and the name of the security is displayed based on the virtual ISIN.A search on SEIBro reveals that as of July 28, Changxin Technology had appeared among the stocks with the highest net purchase amounts by Korean investors in the previous week. However, as of July 27, Changxin Technology did not appear in the list of the top 50 A-shares by net purchase amount from Korean investors in the previous week (it is also possible that Korean investors had already bought it, but Changxin Technology did not make it into the top 50 A-shares by net purchase amount). This indicates that at the latest by July 28, which is the second day after Changxin Technology's listing, Korean investors had begun to buy.

According to SK Hynix's announcement on August 19, SK Hynix has decided to repurchase 24.07 million shares of common stock through the open market, with an expected repurchase amount of approximately 40.0043 trillion Korean won (about 28.57 billion USD). SK Hynix stated that this repurchase aims to enhance shareholder value by canceling treasury shares.It is reported that Gate has earlier launched perpetual contracts for SKHYNIX stock and trading for SK Hynix (000660) on the Korean stock market.

SK Hynix will implement a share buyback and cancellation plan worth 40 trillion won (approximately 28.5 billion USD) starting from August 20, repurchasing about 24.07 million shares, which accounts for approximately 3.3% of the total outstanding shares. Based on the previous day's closing price of 1.662 million won per share, this represents about 58% of its net cash of 69 trillion won as of the end of the second quarter. The buyback will last for about three months, and all repurchased shares will be completely canceled. This is also the largest stock cancellation plan ever by a listed company in South Korea.According to the shareholder return policy previously disclosed by the company, SK Hynix plans to use more than 50% of the cumulative free cash flow from 2025 to 2027 for returns, implementing buybacks and cash dividends concurrently, and is studying the expansion of the dividend plan. The company stated that this early buyback is based on the judgment that "the stock price is below intrinsic value" to achieve efficient capital reallocation. Specific additional return plans, including dividends and stock buybacks, will be announced after a board resolution during the third quarter earnings release.

According to a report by the Korea United News Agency, the Gwangju Police Agency's Cyber Crime Investigation Team will arrest and transfer three suspects led by A (in their 60s), who are suspected of establishing offices in Seoul, Gwangju in South Jeolla Province, and Gunsan in North Jeolla Province since November 2024. They allegedly deceived over 100 elderly individuals aged 70 to 80 into investing in virtual assets with false promises such as "guaranteed principal" and "potential profits of hundreds of billions of Korean won," accumulating approximately 500 million Korean won in fraud.The police stated that there are likely still unreported victims and are continuing to expand the investigation, reminding the public to remain vigilant against investment offers that promise guaranteed principal and high returns.

The Korea Communications Standards Commission (KCSC) held a meeting of the Communications Review Subcommittee and determined that the overseas prediction market platform Polymarket provided illegal betting, deciding to implement access blocking measures against it. The committee judged that Polymarket's business model is based on the outcomes of events that users cannot control, such as politics, sports, elections, and weather, adopting a "winner takes all" profit and loss structure that fosters speculative psychology; the platform operator is responsible for market establishment, trading rule setting, and overall operational management, providing a virtual asset acceptance and settlement system, which effectively creates an environment for raising and delivering user funds, and profits by charging transaction fees through share trading, violating South Korea's Criminal Law and the National Sports Promotion Act.Polymarket argued that the platform operates based on non-custodial peer-to-peer trading and smart contracts, and does not directly raise funds, manage funds, or issue sports promotion voting rights. However, the committee responded that one cannot evade the applicability of domestic laws in South Korea based on technical characteristics such as whether Korean language services are provided, decentralized technology, or centralized trading interfaces. Given that the platform has actually provided illegal betting to South Korean users, access blocking is unavoidable to protect domestic users.

According to The Block, South Korea's two major cryptocurrency exchanges, Upbit and Bithumb, released their financial reports for the first half of 2026. Affected by the sluggish cryptocurrency market, both exchanges experienced a significant decline in revenue and profit.Upbit's parent company, Dunamu, reported a revenue of 408.1 billion won (approximately 289 million USD) in the first half of the year, a year-on-year decrease of 49.1%; operating profit was 111.5 billion won, a year-on-year decrease of 79.7%; and net profit was 108.4 billion won, a year-on-year decrease of 74.1%. Bithumb reported a revenue of 168.8 billion won in the first half of the year, a year-on-year decrease of 48.7%; operating profit was 14.9 billion won, a year-on-year decrease of 83.4%, and a net loss of 108.7 billion won, compared to a net profit of 55 billion won in the same period last year.During the reporting period, Bitcoin fell from about 90,000 USD to 60,000 USD, and Ethereum dropped from 3,000 USD to about 1,600 USD. The strong rise in the semiconductor sector of the domestic stock market in South Korea attracted a large amount of capital out of the cryptocurrency market. The total trading volume of the five licensed exchanges in the second quarter decreased by 49.5% year-on-year to 146.43 billion USD.Despite the pressure on performance, both exchanges are still advancing capital operations: Dunamu is conducting a share swap with Naver Financial and plans to go public on NASDAQ within five years after completion; Bithumb plans to improve its internal control system in 2026 and submit a pre-listing application in 2027, aiming to complete its IPO in 2028.

Ripple officially announced that Jeonbuk Bank has become the first local bank in South Korea to deploy Ripple Payments, providing its corporate clients with near real-time, 24/7 cross-border settlement services to replace the time-consuming SWIFT transfers. This collaboration will help the bank enhance its cross-border payment efficiency and service capabilities.This is Ripple's third partnership in South Korea this year, having previously collaborated with Kyobo Life Insurance and Kbank on custody, wallet infrastructure, and payment services. Several leading financial institutions in South Korea are continuing to advance cooperation with Ripple in the fields of payments and related infrastructure.