Wemade's Park Kwan-ho Faces Risk of Losing 24 Billion Won... Concerns Raised Over GDAC WEMIX 'Exit Scam' Possibility

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Wemade founder Chairman Park Kwan-ho is facing the risk of losing about 24 billion KRW. This is because he has been unable to recover almost all of the WEMIX tokens he purchased on the digital asset exchange GDAC for over a year since the WEMIX hacking incident occurred on GDAC. Furthermore, with GDAC recently deciding to terminate WEMIX trading, there is speculation that the exchange may have no intention of returning the affected tokens to Chairman Park.

According to industry sources on the 2nd, GDAC, a domestic coin market (C2C) exchange that lost 10 million WEMIX tokens due to a hacking incident last year, decided on the 27th to end support for WEMIX trading. WEMIX is a virtual currency issued by Wemade. Accordingly, deposits and trading of WEMIX will end on the 29th, and withdrawals will also be suspended from 6 PM on April 29th.

GDAC explained that its internal review committee decided to terminate WEMIX trading due to reasons such as lack of marketability and legal issues. Despite this explanation, there remain many unclear aspects. Typically, a warning designation is issued before trading support ends, but this decision was made without such a process.

Therefore, some interpret that Chairman Park Kwan-ho’s pressure to recover his WEMIX tokens influenced this decision. Chairman Park announced last year that he would purchase about 30 billion KRW worth of WEMIX for responsible management and bought approximately 11 million WEMIX tokens through GDAC. Subsequently, in April last year, GDAC was hacked, resulting in the theft of 10 million WEMIX tokens.

At the shareholders’ meeting on the 29th of last month, Chairman Park stated, “I entrusted 11 million WEMIX tokens to GDAC, but 8 million tokens remain unreleased. I requested the full amount to be returned, but GDAC refused and limited daily withdrawals to 16 million tokens. I am the biggest victim of the hacking.” The 8 million unrecovered WEMIX tokens are worth about 24 billion KRW at the current price of 3,100 KRW per token.

Asia Economy sought GDAC’s response regarding Chairman Park’s remarks, but GDAC did not provide any specific comments.

Despite Chairman Park’s clear losses, it is difficult to receive compensation under the current legal framework. The Act on the Protection of Virtual Asset Users, which includes penalties and compensation regulations for hacking incidents on digital asset exchanges, will be enforced from July this year, but it does not apply retroactively to past incidents.

Ultimately, the only option left for Chairman Park is litigation. He is expected to file a lawsuit based on Article 390 of the Civil Act concerning non-performance of obligations and Article 790 regarding claims for tort. However, the legal community views that it may be difficult to receive full compensation because the user must prove that the exchange was negligent in preventing the hacking.

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