South Korean authorities have cut off direct domestic access to 27 websites run by foreign crypto exchanges in one sweep. The list includes KuCoin, MEXC, Phemex and Bitrue — and for the first time, the crackdown isn't limited to mobile apps. Plain browser access to these sites is now being blocked too.
The call came from the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), after South Korea's Korea Communications Standards Commission reviewed the case on October 6-7. The legal basis is the Act on Reporting and Using Specified Financial Transaction Information, the country's anti-money-laundering law. To decide who qualifies as a target, officials checked three signals: a Korean-language interface, marketing aimed at Korean users, and support for won-denominated transactions.
Besides KuCoin, MEXC, Phemex and Bitrue, the restrictions hit XT.com, CoinW, Poloniex, BTCC, BitMart, BingX and DigiFinex — 27 platforms in total. Exchanges operating purely from abroad will simply lose domestic website access; any platform with servers or staff inside Korea will be ordered to stop serving local customers outright.
The thorniest question is what happens to money already sitting on these exchanges. The FIU openly admitted users could run into trouble withdrawing funds. Help is supposed to come through DAXA, the alliance of licensed domestic exchanges like Upbit and Bithumb — but only if the blocked platforms themselves agree to cooperate, which is far from guaranteed.
This isn't the first blow against offshore platforms. In 2025, regulators already pulled 14 apps from the App Store and 17 from Google Play, barred banks from processing transfers to unregistered exchanges or card payments for crypto purchases, and referred 44 operators to investigators. Mobile app stores are now joined by ordinary websites — closing the browser loophole that remained open until now.
The block itself doesn't physically stop trading — anyone can get around it with a VPN in a couple of minutes. The real effect is more statistical than absolute: it cuts the largest offshore exchanges off from an easy, direct line into one of the world's most active retail crypto markets, rather than seizing anyone's assets by force.
