South Korean Ruling Party Lawmaker Accused of "Pressuring an exchange, Securing an exchange Job for Son," Denies Allegations

BlockBeats News, December 29th. Kim Byung-ki, an in-house representative of South Korea's ruling Democratic Party, is facing pressure to resign. Multiple South Korean media outlets revealed that he was accused of a serious conflict of interest when his son interned at an exchange while he was pushing for criticism against another exchange, South Korea's largest cryptocurrency exchange, in the National Assembly.

According to a former aide of Kim, at Kim's request, the team was instructed to "attack" Dunamu, the operator of an exchange, in the National Assembly, focusing on accusing them of market monopoly issues. The instructions reportedly took place in February of this year when Kim was still a member of the National Assembly's Legislation and Judiciary Committee, which directly oversees domestic financial institutions and cryptocurrency exchanges.

A investigative media outlet, NewsTapa, previously revealed that Kim's son was "swiftly arranged" as an intern for an exchange's data analytics team shortly after his father's private meeting with an exchange in November 2024. In the following weeks, Kim criticized a "monopolistic exchange" in committee meetings multiple times, though not by name, but widely interpreted as referring to another exchange.

Kim also mentioned that the exchange platform had around 700,000 violations found in anti-money laundering (AML) and know your customer (KYC) checks but did not make similar comments about other exchanges with similar issues. In response, an exchange denied any wrongdoing, stating their recruitment process was "open and transparent." Kim himself denied the allegations, emphasizing that his statements were merely a principled stance against monopolies, and his son's employment was "completely unrelated to his legislative activities."