South Korea’s regulatory sandbox has helped create almost 380 blockchain and other fintech jobs and generated around $110 million in investments. According to Shina Ilbo, the sandbox is overseen by the government's financial regulator, the Financial Services Commission, or FSC. It temporarily exempts companies from various regulations regarding financial services to aid with innovation and growth. The report said that 16 companies have been recognized for their growth potential, and attracted more than 136.4 billion won ($110 million) in new investments. Some of the companies participating in the government-sponsored program are pursuing business across 14 countries in Asia, including Indonesia, …

Samsung and SK Telecom, a South Korean mobile carrier, unveiled the world’s first 5G smartphone equipped with blockchain-powered ID authentication. The phone, called “Galaxy A Quantum”, has a quantum random number generation chipset developed in partnership with Samsung Electronics. The phone’s initial price is 649,000 Korean won, or $527.54 USD, according to the announcement on May 14. Blockchain-powered features incorporated The company stated that the blockchain-powered system is utilized when users pay for goods and services at offline merchants with the SK Pay. Blockchain is also used to help prevent the falsification and theft of information stored on the phone. …

Crypto funds associated with Upbit’s $50 million hack in November 2019 have continued to move. Soon after hitting the world’s biggest crypto exchange, Binance, large sums of the stolen funds continued to be transferred to a little-known crypto exchange as well as major exchanges like OKEx. On May 14, Whale Alert — a service dedicated to tracking major crypto transactions — reported on a series of new transactions involving funds from Upbit’s 2019 hack. According to Whale Alert, a large portion of the stolen Ether (ETH) has also hit a number of unknown wallets. Addresses of little-known exchange Byex.com receive …

Blockchain rewards platform MiL.k has teamed up with Seoul-based luxury-retail-space chain Shinsegae Duty Free to provide loyalty points compatibility and management. The new partnership allows Shinsegae customers to connect their existing rewards accounts to the MiL.k mobile application, according to a press release shared with Cointelegraph on Monday. Adoption for “millions” of clients? Once users interlink the accounts, they can reportedly trade their Shinsegae loyalty points for the in-house cryptocurrency called MLK, which currently trades at $0.19 per token. MLK, in turn, can be exchanged for reward points at other partnering vendors, such as Yanolja, a Korean travel accommodation platform. …

The South Korean blockchain space is seeing a steady stream of platforms specialized in trading for unlisted stocks, following on from a major offering from state-backed financial IT firm Koscom last year. Business Korea cites two unnamed industry sources on May 11, who have claimed that two further platforms from Kakao-backed Dunamu and PSX will be launching this September and in February 2021. Local commentators expect the provision of secure trading venues for unlisted stocks to boost investment in local start-ups, the report notes. Solid support for blockchain initiatives As reported, Koscom’s blockchain-based Be My Unicorn platform received backing from …

Klaytn, the public blockchain platform developed by Ground X, an affiliate of the major South Korean internet company, Kakao, joined Celo’s Alliance for Prosperity on May 8. Celo, a distributed ledger technology, or DLT, based decentralized application and stablecoin platform and prominent rival to Facebook’s Libra project, has now attracted nearly 80 firms to its alliance — with Celo announcing more than 20 new members earlier this week. Top Korean blockchain platform joins Celo alliance According to a press release, Klaytn will research interoperability between the Klaytn and Celo platforms, and integrate support for its KLAY token on Celo’s ecosystem. …

The government of South Korea’s planned city Sejong — which is the country’s testing ground for major smart city solutions — announced Friday that it will be establishing a blockchain-based platform for storing and verifying the digital identities of self-driving vehicles. An Asian news outlet, Aju Business Daily, reported that South Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT along with the country’s internet technology watchdog, Korea Internet & Security Agency, will be leading the development of the identity management and verification platform. According to a Sejong city official, the blockchain-based technology platform will “greatly increase the credibility of data by strengthening …

A newly unearthed report from South Korea’s financial watchdogs has revealed the rationale behind the country’s 2018 crypto crackdown that played a featured role in ‘Crypto Winter’. Digital Today dug up the “2017 Anti-Money Laundering Annual Report” which showed the Financial Intelligence Unit had identified more than half a million crypto transactions in South Korea in 2017 related to illegal activities. The 519,908 crypto transactions were flagged by authorities as “suspicious” and the upswing in money laundering fuelled the national government’s decision to carry out a partial crypto crackdown in 2018. The report took several years to be made public, …

South Korean IT experts claim that investigators in the Telegram Nth room case could have trouble identifying users who used crypto payments to access illicit videos via the chat platform. Overseas exchanges’ transactions could be an issue According to local media, Maeil Kyungjae, it is more difficult to trace payments made via international crypto exchanges versus local exchanges. A police officer involved in the investigation told Maeil Kyungjae: "It is complicated to realistically track the money that criminals have exchanged in foreign exchanges into Korean Won through illegal exchange offices." South Korean law enforcement members also warned that when illegal …

South Korean authorities have managed to trace the digital fingerprints of at least 40 people suspected of having paid with cryptocurrencies to access videos of rape and sexual exploitation of minors in the context of the "Nth Room" case. According to a report published on April 27 by local news agency Yonhap News, a raid on 20 of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in South Korea yielded information that the police have used to find users, thus setting a precedent for investigations on crypto-related crimes in the country. Payments sent to Nth Room’s mastermind Yonhap also reported the story of a …

Rewards points Blockchain platform, MiL.k Alliance, has coupled up with Korean travel accommodation platform, Yanolja, for rewards points compatibility and usage. "The integration with South Korea’s fastest growing online travel agency means that Yanolja members can now connect the Yanolja app to the MiL.k app, providing the ability to earn rewards and participate in MiL.k promotions," said a statement provided to Cointelegraph. MiL.k makes rewards points less cumbersome Earning rewards points can be a siloed endeavor. Transferring or selling said points is often not possible. Points also often require usage at the company of origin. MiL.k's blockchain-based system focuses on …

LG Corporation’s IT services subsidiary is now testing artificial intelligence-based facial recognition technology which allows users to conduct payments using digital currency. LG CNS used its employees to test the new facial recognition service, IT Times reported on April 23. The platform includes AI, blockchain, and cloud technologies. After identifying an employee, the system enables them to automatically pay for services and products at the corporate restaurant with a pre-registered blockchain-based community currency. Lee Joon-won, solution business development manager at LG CNS, said: "It is expected that blockchain-based community currency will be used by a lot more people as it …