South Korea Elects Crypto-Friendly Lee Jae-myung as New President

Crypto-friendly Lee Jae-myung was elected as South Korea’s new president on Wednesday, defeating the incumbent Conservative Party’s leader Kim Moon-soo.

During the election Lee made a number of promises to South Korea’s crypto industry, appealing to the nation’s 15 million crypto investors. These included legalizing spot cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds and allowing institutional investors like the National Pension Fund to make investments into certain cryptocurrencies and products, local media outlet The Korea Herald said in May.

Lee also said the country should support a won-based stablecoin market “to prevent national wealth from leaking overseas,” during a policy discussion with YouTube creators, The Korea Herald reported.

The Democratic Party of Korea’s Lee won against Kim from the People Power Party, its opposition party, by nearly three million votes in the snap election. There were more than 17 million votes in total and Lee secured 49.4% of them, data from South Korea’s National Election Commission showed.

South Korea has established new regulations for crypto companies over the past two years. Its National Assembly passed legislation for digital assets in 2023. The Virtual Asset User Protection Act defined what digital assets were and set penalties for unfair transactions. It also gave the Financial Services Commission authority to oversee service providers. The nation also published guidelines for regulating security tokens around a similar time.

Now South Korea has started letting non-profits and exchanges sell crypto under new rules under the Financial Services Commission.

Countries and leaders in Asia — like in Pakistan and Hong Kong — have been pushing for more crypto measures as the sector has jumped to reach its current $3.4 trillion market cap and crypto has become more mainstream.