[2022 National Audit] Lee Bok-hyun "Will Investigate Illegal Activities of North Korea-related Coins"

Financial Supervisory Service Governor Lee Bok-hyun attended the National Assembly's audit of the Financial Supervisory Service on the 11th and was seen talking with Senior Deputy Governor Lee Myung-soon during the audit. Photo by Yoon Dong-joo doso7@

[Asia Economy Reporter Ji Yeon-jin] On the 11th, Lee Bok-hyun, Governor of the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), stated regarding suspicions of illegal cryptocurrency remittances to North Korea through domestic virtual asset exchanges, "Since the related funds must pass through financial institutions, we will investigate illegal activities by examining these financial institutions."

On the same day, during the National Assembly's Financial Services Commission's audit of the FSS in the afternoon, in response to a question from Yoon Han-hong, a member of the People Power Party, who said, "We must clarify the suspicions that North Korea coins were created and money was transferred to North Korea starting now," Lee said, "If necessary, we will closely cooperate with investigative agencies such as the prosecution and police."

On this day, Representative Yoon questioned by citing the claim of Kim Ui-gyeom of the Democratic Party that Minister of Justice Han Dong-hoon’s trip to the United States in July was to investigate Democratic Party figures.

According to Representative Kim, Virgil Griffith, who developed the cryptocurrency Ethereum, visited North Korea in 2019 and was caught after introducing technology to transfer cryptocurrency overseas to evade sanctions against North Korea, receiving a 63-month prison sentence.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, which investigated this case, submitted emails exchanged between Griffith and a contact in Korea to the court. These emails reportedly contained content stating that "the Mayor of Seoul and the Mayor of Seongnam in Korea are interested in establishing a cryptocurrency transaction network with North Korea." Here, the Mayor of Seoul refers to the late Park Won-soon, and the Mayor of Seongnam refers to Representative Lee Jae-myung.

Representative Kim claimed, "From the ruling party’s perspective, this could be an opportunity to catch the link with North Korea and sweep up key figures of the Moon Jae-in administration, including Mayor Lee Jae-myung. It can be said that Minister Han’s trip to the U.S. was to investigate this."

In this regard, the FSS recently detected suspicious overseas remittance circumstances involving transactions worth about 7 trillion won at NH Futures and has launched an investigation into whether similar transactions exist at all futures companies and securities firms.

The FSS inspection revealed that the abnormal foreign currency remittance amount was $5.04 billion (approximately 7.18 trillion won), which is the amount remitted overseas from entrusted accounts to foreign investment corporations’ overseas accounts using funds withdrawn from domestic virtual asset exchanges since 2019.

A foreign investment corporation representative of Chinese nationality used a method of opening entrusted accounts under the corporation’s name at NH Futures under the pretext of derivative transactions (won-dollar futures trading). Funds withdrawn from domestic virtual asset exchanges flowed through the foreign investment corporation representative and multiple individuals to the foreign investment corporation’s account.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.