Korea Still Has a Window to Become a Global Crypto Power, SCI Head Says

[Edaily, Lee Jeong-hun Reporter] “Digital assets are like one enormous elephant,” said Park Jong-baek. “Until now, we have touched only one part of the elephant and argued over whether that part needs fixing and, if so, how. Approach it that way, and you end up with far too many reasons not to act.” Park Jong-baek, president of the Seoul Crypto InstituteSpeaking to Edaily on Oct. 22, Park looked back on nearly a decade of efforts to build a regulatory framework for crypto in Korea. Park, a lawyer at Bae, Kim & Lee LLC, will serve as founding president of the Seoul Crypto Institute, or SCI, Korea‘s first private-sector think tank devoted to digital-asset policy. The same is true of the debate over taxing crypto, Park said. When the question is framed narrowly as whether to tax, the case for taxation almost always prevails. Only when the issue is weighed against the broader goals of building the industry and securing global competitiveness, he argued, does the case for deferring the tax gain traction. “That is the bigger picture we intend to draw,” he said. “Each time an incident occurred, the instinct to contain the risks first dominated the discussion,” he said. “As a result, t...