South Korea ramps up crypto seizures, will target cold wallets

South Korea’s Nationwide Tax Administration (NTS) is increasing its crackdown on tax evasion, warning that even crypto belongings saved in chilly wallets will likely be seized.

In accordance with a report from native information channel Hankook Ilbo, an NTS official stated the company is ready to conduct searches and seize onerous drives and chilly pockets units if the company suspects tax delinquents are hiding their crypto belongings offline.

“We analyze the coin transaction historical past of tax offenders by crypto monitoring packages, and if there’s any suspicion of offline concealment, we are going to conduct searches and seizures,” the NTS spokesperson reportedly stated.

Below the nation’s Nationwide Tax Assortment Act, the NTS can request account info from native exchanges, freeze tax delinquents’ accounts and liquidate their belongings at market worth to cowl their unpaid taxes.

NTS has seized and liquidated greater than $100 million price of crypto in 4 years

A chilly pockets is a crypto storage methodology that is still disconnected from the web. This setup makes it harder for hackers to entry the cash remotely. Whereas it helps safe crypto belongings, the NTS states that it may also be used to cover belongings, making tax assortment more difficult.

The declaration marks a brand new section within the company’s enforcement technique as cryptocurrency continues to realize mainstream adoption within the nation.

Hankook Ilbo reported that the variety of crypto buyers within the nation rose to almost 11 million in June, a rise of virtually 800% from 1.2 million in 2020.

The newspaper additionally stated that commerce volumes within the nation elevated from 1 trillion gained ($730 million) to six.4 trillion gained ($4.7 billion) throughout the identical interval.

The rise in cryptocurrency adoption additionally led to a rise in crypto-related tax evasion instances within the nation. The company first started concentrating on tax evaders’ crypto belongings in 2021, seizing round $50 million from 5,700 suspects.

Since then, the NTS has accelerated its efforts and elevated scrutiny of using cryptocurrencies for tax evasion within the nation. The report states that the NTS has seized and liquidated $108 million in cryptocurrency from greater than 14,000 people over the previous 4 years.

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Suspicious crypto transactions will enhance in 2025

The NTS look ahead to chilly wallets comes amid a wave of suspicious crypto transactions in 2025.

On September 22, knowledge from the nation’s Monetary Intelligence Unit (FIU) confirmed that digital asset service suppliers (VASPs) within the nation had filed practically 37,000 suspicious transaction reviews (STRs) in August 2025.

STRs are some of the essential anti-money laundering (AML) instruments. In accordance with the info, STRs filed in 2025 have already exceeded the mixed totals of 2023 and 2024 and reached new all-time highs.

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