South Korean Lawmaker Attacked Upbit While Son Landed Bithumb Job — Conflict of Interest?

A senior South Korean lawmaker is facing mounting scrutiny after local media reported that he aggressively questioned the country’s largest cryptocurrency exchange while his son was securing a role at its main rival, raising renewed concerns about conflicts of interest at the intersection of politics and the crypto industry.

Kim Byung-kee, floor leader of the Democratic Party and a member of the National Assembly’s Political Affairs Committee, has been accused of pressuring Dunamu, the operator of Upbit, while allegedly helping one of his sons obtain an internship at Bithumb.

The allegations were first detailed in reports by Kyunghyang Shinmun and later echoed by other domestic outlets, citing testimony from former aides and internal timelines.

From Private Meetings to Public Pressure—Questions Trail Lawmaker’s Moves

According to those reports, Kim met with Bithumb executives in November last year. Around the same period, a job posting appeared at Bithumb for a data analysis intern, with qualifications that reportedly matched his son’s academic background in mathematics from a U.S. university.

The son joined Bithumb in January and left the company in June. A former aide claimed that Kim’s staff had earlier circulated the son’s résumé to other firms before the Bithumb role materialized, describing the eventual hire as “special employment.”

Shortly after the Bithumb meeting and job posting, Kim allegedly instructed his aides to prepare aggressive questioning targeting Dunamu.

One former assistant told reporters that Kim explicitly used the phrase “attack Dunamu,” framing Upbit’s market dominance as a monopoly problem.

In February, Kim raised those concerns publicly during a Political Affairs Committee session, citing Upbit’s market share, its handling of the Terra-Luna collapse, and findings from a Financial Intelligence Unit inspection that identified more than 700,000 customer identification violations.

During that session, Kim did not question Bithumb and, as of this moment, has denied any wrongdoing.

He said his legislative activities were based on general policy concerns and were unrelated to his son’s employment, which he maintains was conducted through open recruitment.

He also stated that he did not name any specific company in committee discussions and that linking his oversight role to his family member’s job was regrettable.

Bithumb has likewise said its recruitment process was transparent and that concerns about monopolization in the crypto market have been raised consistently by lawmakers and experts since 2021.

Upbit Dominance Fuels Debate Over Systemic Risk in Korea

The scandal has been occurring against the backdrop of a deepening examination of the dominance of Upbit in the crypto market of South Korea.

The information from the Financial Supervisory Service reveals that Upbit took 71.6 percent of the domestic crypto trading volume in the first half of 2025 and registered approximately 833 trillion won, or approximately 642 billion dollars, in transactions.

Bithumb came in second with 25.8 percent of the market, and the rest of the licensed exchanges had less than 3 percent of the market.

Such concentration, regulators and lawmakers across party lines have cautioned, might be systemic, especially when Dunamu, which is currently on the verge of a proposed merger with internet giant Naver, becomes systemic.

The regulators criticized the platform in the future with respect to slow reporting and inadequate accountability as per existing laws.

In turn, authorities are currently considering reforms to introduce bank-level liability standards to crypto exchanges, such as mandatory compensation to users in case of a hack or system failure and much heavier fines.

The case of Kim is now in the dent of a wider discussion in South Korea on the topic of oversight, healthy competition, and the limits of legislative authority and individual interests in a fiercely expanding market of digital assets.