Korea Launches Investigation Into “Kimchi Premium”

South Korea is said to have launched an investigation into Kimchi Premium because of the appearance of $ 1.5 billion in illegal remittances.

The Seoul Central District Prosecutors Office is said to have launched a new investigation into illegal remittances worth more than 2 trillion won (1.5 billion). This is part of a larger year-long investigation conducted by the Korea Financial Services Supervisory Service (FSS).

The FSS submitted an “investigative reference” to the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office yesterday. “We are just looking at the data,” a prosecutor’s office official commented to a local media outlet.

The above-unauthorized money was generated from Kimchi Premium, which is the difference in the price of a cryptocurrency (usually Bitcoin) on a Korean exchange compared to foreign exchange. This may be due to the country’s lack of highly lucrative investment options.

Korean investors can take advantage here to profit from the price difference by buying Bitcoin abroad and reselling it in Korea. Notably, a significant amount of remittances have recently been made to China.

The danger of Kimchi Premium once caused CoinMarketCap to stop taking price references from Korean exchanges. However, Kimchi Premium has never been a positive signal for the market. Investors can still profit from arbitrage on exchanges, but with the Bitcoin price, this will be a relatively uncomfortable barrier in the long run.