The financial authorities are accelerating work on a sweeping revision of the Act on Reporting and Using Specified Financial Transaction Information. The goal is to finish internal discussions in the first half of the year, draw up an amendment, and submit it to the regular National Assembly session in September. They are also actively gathering industry feedback on the amended enforcement decree of the act, which is slated to take effect in August.
According to a compilation of ChosunBiz reporting on the 20th, the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) under the Financial Services Commission formed a task force early this year for a comprehensive revision of the Act on Reporting and Using Specified Financial Transaction Information and is drafting the amendment. In the FIU's "2026 Key Anti-Money Laundering Work Plan," released in February, the full-scale revision of the act was also listed as a key strategy for this year.
The full-scale revision of the act is said to be the FIU's highest-priority task at the moment. The FIU aims to complete task force discussions in the first half, produce the amendment, and have related deliberations begin with the regular National Assembly session convening on Sept. 1.
The goal of the sweeping revision is to introduce a "suspension system for accounts suspected of major livelihood-infringing crimes." The aim is to swiftly freeze accounts suspected of being used for crimes that harm people's livelihoods—such as narcotics, gambling and terrorism—to block further offenses. As groundwork, in January the FIU fully revised the "reference typologies for suspicious transactions related to money laundering" to reflect the latest laundering methods tied to transnational crimes and crimes infringing on people's livelihoods.
Under the current system, even when an account is suspected of being used for livelihood-related crimes, freezing generally required a court decision except in limited cases. For this reason, the comprehensive amendment is expected to introduce a system allowing the FIU, upon requests from investigative agencies and the like, to directly decide to suspend accounts suspected of crime.
In addition, the FIU is gathering opinions from the virtual asset industry regarding the amended enforcement decree of the act that is scheduled to take effect on Aug. 20. To that end, on the morning of the previous day, officials from the five major virtual asset exchanges and the Digital Asset eXchange Alliance (DAXA) held a meeting with the FIU at the Government Complex Seoul.
In the virtual asset industry, some had voiced concern that the FIU was amending the enforcement decree to gain a legal upper hand. After courts repeatedly sided with the industry in lawsuits challenging the FIU's "partial business suspension" and "fines," the view was that the FIU moved to strengthen the legal basis for various sanctions. In response, an FIU official drew a line during the meeting, saying, "The amendment to the enforcement decree is not intended to pressure the industry."
A virtual asset industry official said, "As the FIU speeds up the revision of the act, it is communicating actively with the industry. But we are closely watching the situation because we do not know what the actual amendment will look like."