South Korea Blocks 27 Unregistered Exchange Sites, KuCoin Among Them

South Korea's Financial Intelligence Unit has ordered access cut to 27 websites run by crypto exchanges that never registered with it. KuCoin, MEXC, BitMart and Phemex appear on every published account of the list; Cointelegraph adds BingX, Bitrue, CoinW, BTCC and DigiFinex. The unit disclosed the order on Tuesday, citing reviews held by the country's communications standards body on 6 and 7 October. Sites operated from abroad lose access inside Korea, and anything run domestically is told to shut the service down. The FIU asked customers to pull their money out immediately, while conceding the blocks may make that harder.

Eighteen names nobody has published

Nine of the 27 sites have been identified across four outlets. The rest have not. The FIU's statement, as carried by Cointelegraph, says that "blocking measures against illegal virtual asset operators will also apply to internet websites". Until now the campaign ran through the app stores. Google Play restricted 17 unregistered platforms in March 2025, cryptonews and Finance Magnates reported; Apple followed in April with 14 apps, per Cointelegraph. The websites were what was left.

Cointelegraph names the Act on Reporting and Using Specified Financial Transaction Information as the legal basis, the statute carrying Korea's anti-money-laundering obligations. CoinDesk cites no statute at all. Operating without registering under it can bring up to five years in prison or a fine of up to 50 million won, about $37,000, on cryptonews' and Finance Magnates' reading. Both outlets note what the FIU no longer has to produce first: no court ruling, no proof a customer lost money. Sites that reopen at new addresses are to be blocked too.

How Seoul decides an exchange is local

Incorporation is not the test. Authorities look for a Korean-language site, marketing aimed at Korean users and support for payments in won, a trio three outlets describe in near-identical terms. Which body approved the blocks is less settled. CoinDesk calls it the Korea Communications Standards Commission and Cointelegraph the Korea Media and Communications Standards Commission, while cryptonews and Finance Magnates decline to name it. The 6 and 7 October review dates are the one procedural detail all four agree on.

CoinDesk also reports that 44 unregistered operators have been referred to investigators and that just 28 virtual asset service providers hold FIU registration. Neither figure turns up in the other three accounts. Regulated Korean products have kept arriving in the meantime, with Jeonbuk Bank lending won against bitcoin as a domestic first.

Two numbers for the money that left

The figures in circulation on Tuesday all describe capital going offshore, and none of them measures the same thing. CoinDesk puts an estimated $110 billion of crypto leaving domestic exchanges during 2025. cryptonews cites Tiger Research for $3.5 billion in fees paid to foreign venues that year, and Tiger Research with Chainalysis for roughly 700 trillion won moving out of Korea between 2021 and 2026, a window that folds in a projection for this year and counts only traceable routes. An asset flow, a fee bill and a six-year total are three different things. They do not reconcile, and no outlet tried to square them.

Withdrawals are the part left open

Blocking a website moves nobody's balance. The FIU said it will route withdrawal guidance through DAXA, the alliance of registered Korean exchanges, and has asked the blocked operators to cooperate. KuCoin was the only named platform to answer either CoinDesk or Cointelegraph.

"User assets remain safe and secure, and we will communicate any further updates through our official channels," a KuCoin spokesperson told CoinDesk.

BitMart, Phemex and MEXC did not respond to CoinDesk before it published. What no account contains is a date. None of the four says when the blocks begin, how long they run, or whether a blocked venue can file and come back. The Digital Asset Basic Law, which CoinDesk describes as covering issuance, trading, custody and supervision in one framework, is still only proposed. Supervisors elsewhere in the region have been formalizing their own channels, and Dubai's VARA signed an intelligence-sharing deal with the UAE's financial intelligence unit. For now the Korean unit's leverage is the one it used on Tuesday.