South Korean Lawmaker Attacked Upbit While Son Landed Bithumb Job — Conflict of Interest?
A senior South Korean lawmaker is going through mounting scrutiny after native media reported that he aggressively questioned the nation’s largest cryptocurrency trade whereas his son was securing a task at its most important rival, elevating renewed issues about conflicts of curiosity on the intersection of politics and the crypto trade.
Kim Byung-kee, flooring chief of the Democratic Party and a member of the National Assembly’s Political Affairs Committee, has been accused of pressuring Dunamu, the operator of Upbit, whereas allegedly serving to one of his sons get hold of an internship at Bithumb.
The allegations had been first detailed in reviews by Kyunghyang Shinmun and later echoed by different home shops, citing testimony from former aides and inner timelines.
From Private Meetings to Public Pressure—Questions Trail Lawmaker’s Moves
According to these reviews, Kim met with Bithumb executives in November final yr. Around the identical interval, a job posting appeared at Bithumb for an information evaluation intern, with {qualifications} that reportedly matched his son’s educational background in arithmetic from a U.S. college.
The son joined Bithumb in January and left the corporate in June. A former aide claimed that Kim’s workers had earlier circulated the son’s résumé to different companies earlier than the Bithumb function materialized, describing the eventual rent as “particular employment.”
Shortly after the Bithumb assembly and job posting, Kim allegedly instructed his aides to organize aggressive questioning focusing on Dunamu.
One former assistant instructed reporters that Kim explicitly used the phrase “assault Dunamu,” framing Upbit’s market dominance as a monopoly downside.
In February, Kim raised these issues publicly throughout a Political Affairs Committee session, citing Upbit’s market share, its dealing with of the Terra-Luna collapse, and findings from a Financial Intelligence Unit inspection that recognized greater than 700,000 buyer identification violations.
During that session, Kim didn’t query Bithumb and, as of this second, has denied any wrongdoing.
He mentioned his legislative actions had been based mostly on common coverage issues and had been unrelated to his son’s employment, which he maintains was performed via open recruitment.
He additionally said that he didn’t identify any particular firm in committee discussions and that linking his oversight function to his member of the family’s job was regrettable.
Bithumb has likewise mentioned its recruitment course of was clear and that issues about monopolization within the crypto market have been raised constantly by lawmakers and specialists since 2021.
Upbit Dominance Fuels Debate Over Systemic Risk in Korea
The scandal has been occurring towards the backdrop of a deepening examination of the dominance of Upbit within the crypto market of South Korea.
The data from the Financial Supervisory Service reveals that Upbit took 71.6 percent of the domestic crypto trading volume within the first half of 2025 and registered roughly 833 trillion gained, or roughly 642 billion {dollars}, in transactions.
Bithumb got here in second with 25.8 p.c of the market, and the remaining of the licensed exchanges had lower than 3 p.c of the market.
Such focus, regulators and lawmakers across party lines have cautioned, could be systemic, particularly when Dunamu, which is at the moment on the verge of a proposed merger with web big Naver, turns into systemic.
The regulators criticized the platform sooner or later with respect to gradual reporting and insufficient accountability as per present legal guidelines.
In flip, authorities are currently considering reforms to introduce bank-level legal responsibility requirements to crypto exchanges, corresponding to necessary compensation to customers in case of a hack or system failure and far heavier fines.
The case of Kim is now within the dent of a wider dialogue in South Korea on the subject of oversight, wholesome competitors, and the bounds of legislative authority and particular person pursuits in a fiercely increasing market of digital belongings.
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