South Korea Sees Surge in Suspicious Crypto Transactions as First Eight Months of 2025 Exceed Previous Two-Year Total

Reports of suspicious transactions involving virtual assets in South Korea have increased sharply in 2025. The Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) received 36,684 suspicious transaction reports (STRs) from January to August, already surpassing the combined number recorded in 2023 and 2024.

Rising STR filings and annual trend

The number of STRs linked to crypto has grown steadily in recent years:

• 2021: 199 cases

• 2022: 10,797 cases

• 2023: 16,076 cases

• 2024: 19,658 cases

• January to August 2025: 36,684 cases

This suggests both the wider use of digital assets in the domestic economy and stronger detection and reporting obligations on virtual asset service providers (VASPs) under existing anti-money laundering laws.

Under Korea’s reporting framework, VASPs must notify the FIU when transactions appear suspicious for money laundering or other illegal purposes. This statutory duty, combined with closer regulatory supervision in recent years, may partly explain the increase, while also pointing to a genuine rise in illicit-usage risks.

Scale and patterns of alleged criminal activity

Data from the Korea Customs Service and prosecutors show that virtual-asset-related crime referred to prosecution between 2021 and August 2025 totaled about 9.5613 trillion KRW, equivalent to approximately 6.84 billion USD. Of this amount, underground remittance activity accounted for about 90.2%.

The dominance of these cases highlights how converting funds into crypto offshore and cashing out domestically remains a major channel for abuse.

Stablecoins have also been identified in recent cases. In May 2025, customs authorities uncovered an underground exchanger accused of converting cash from a foreign importer into USDT and transferring about 57.1 billion KRW illegally.

Lawmakers call for stronger oversight

Democratic Party lawmaker Jin Seong-jun has urged the FIU, Customs Service and related agencies to adopt more effective tracking and blocking measures and to establish systematic countermeasures for new types of foreign exchange crime involving stablecoins.

He warned that as stablecoins are increasingly used in real-world payments and settlements, they could also be exploited for illicit transfers if not properly regulated.

Regulators already enforce the “Travel Rule” and other anti-money laundering requirements on VASPs. The FIU has been working to improve data collection and inter-agency response capacity. However, the surge in STRs and recent customs cases reveal a gap between emerging transaction methods and the regulatory tools available to monitor and disrupt sophisticated cross-border flows.

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