The South Korea Financial Services Commission announced Cabinet approval of amendments that strengthen registration standards for virtual asset service providers and expand anti-money laundering requirements for virtual asset transfers. The measures remove the KRW 1 million travel rule threshold, bringing all transfers between registered providers within the information-sharing requirement, and impose risk-based controls on transactions involving overseas providers and personal wallets. Registration reviews will cover a broader range of major shareholders and assess providers, executives and owners against financial soundness, social credibility and criminal-history criteria. Providers must generally maintain a debt ratio of no more than 200% and have adequate personnel, systems, security infrastructure and internal controls. For overseas-provider and personal-wallet transfers, lower-risk transactions may be permitted, certain other transfers may proceed only where the sender and recipient are the same person, and high-risk transactions must be prohibited. Providers must also operate their own suspicious-transaction controls for transfers of at least KRW 10 million. The amendments further clarify risk-based customer due diligence and delegate certain notifications of sanctions against former financial-sector personnel to inspection authorities. The registration and former-employee notification provisions take effect on Aug. 20, 2026, while the remaining measures take effect six months after promulgation. Existing providers will receive a one-year deferral for the debt-ratio and organizational, infrastructure and internal-control requirements.

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