South Korea is currently in the process of setting up a regulatory framework to oversee the crypto sector. In a fresh development, the Supreme Court of South Korea said crypto assets held on an exchange under criminal investigation qualify as seizable assets.
The decision came as a consequence of an ongoing court case wherein an individual being investigated for money laundering repeatedly argued that non-physical crypto assets cannot be seized.
The case in question included the confiscation of BTC 55.6 worth $413,000 at the time of seizure. The individual being investigated who owned the amount had been pointing out that the South Korean Criminal Procedure law only allowed the seizure of physical properties during an investigation.
Including BTC under the seizable assets list, the Supreme Court called BTC an electronic token that carries an economic value.
“Under the Criminal Procedure Act, seizure targets include both tangible objects and electronic information,” the court was quoted as stating, addressing the situation.
South Korea is working to make itself a safe and lucrative hotspot legal crypto activities. This year, the country plans to permit crypto ETFs, unveil its Digital Asset Act to regulate stablecoins, and tokenize public funds among other measures. The regulators there, however, are bullish on making the crypto ecosystem unexploitable by miscreants.
In September 2025, the country also reportedly set up a virtual assets task force to accelerate the drafting of the crypto regulatory regime.