Korea sets a two-person bar for licensing crypto transfers abroad and to private wallets

The licence is cheap to get. An operator registers with the finance minister before it starts ^[3]. Besides the two staff, who can qualify through foreign exchange experience or completed training, it needs computing systems adequate to the business ^[3]. The package does include a capital figure, an equity floor of 10 million won that the minister can raise, but it is written for currency exchange businesses ^[7].

What the state gets is data. Sedaily describes the package as aimed at blocking the use of crypto to get around currency rules ^[12]. The definition is built around the exchanges. Every covered transfer has a Korean provider at one end, with an overseas provider or a private wallet at the other ^[2]. Counting the Bank of Korea, five state bodies would hold the records ^[13].

Under the old ceiling of 70% of the profit from a violation, an operator given the maximum fine in lieu of suspension still kept at least 30% of the gain ^[15]. At 100% ^[6], the largest fine takes back the gain and nothing more, so the violator ends about even on the transaction ^[15]. In this draft, the penalty that costs a violator more than it made is revocation under the one-strike-out rule ^[5]. Sedaily's account places that rule next to the currency exchange provisions and does not say whether it also covers the new transfer licence.

The package's amount limit applies to a different product. Foreign-currency prepaid payment instruments passed to third parties, which until now ran through the regulatory sandbox, are to be allowed up to a set amount once the decree is final ^[8]. Crypto transfers get a register and a reporting line to the Bank of Korea instead ^[3][4].

Three outcomes fit the same text. If most cross-border crypto already moves through Korean exchanges, a definition anchored on domestic providers catches nearly all of it ^[14]. If it does not, the record catches the first hop and loses the coin once it reaches a private wallet ^[14]. Or the data sits at the Bank of Korea without producing cases, and the licence becomes a filing cost that brings no enforcement. I think the licence is a data-collection measure priced so that many firms can hold it. I'd rate the third outcome the least likely, because the records go straight to the agencies that investigate illegal foreign exchange ^[4] and the penalty list names crypto-linked underground remittance specifically ^[5]. The view is wrong if the final decree gives the transfer licence a capital floor or a volume test, since the price of entry would then decide who runs the business.