South Korean crypto industry warns new reporting rule could paralyze market

South Korea's virtual asset industry is pushing back against a revised enforcement decree of the Act on Reporting and Using Specified Financial Transaction Information, set to take effect in August, Maeil Business Newspaper reported. Industry leaders are concerned that excessive regulations, particularly a mandate for Suspicious Transaction Reporting (STR) on all transactions of 10 million won or more without exception, could paralyze the domestic market. According to a simulation by the Digital Asset eXchange Alliance (DAXA), the new rule is projected to cause the annual number of STRs from the five major won-denominated exchanges to surge by approximately 85 times, from 63,408 to 5,445,133. A DAXA official warned that this would effectively paralyze the country's normal Anti-Money Laundering (AML) monitoring systems.