The Seoul Administrative Court recently issued a ruling officially revoking the three-month suspension of certain business operations imposed by financial authorities on Dunamu, the operator of Upbit. This decision put an end to the regulatory dispute that began in February 2025, allowing the exchange to continue recruiting new users and conducting digital asset transfers during the litigation period. This legal victory indicates that regulatory authorities now have much less room to impose strict anti-money laundering sanctions on crypto companies in the absence of clear compliance guidelines.

In its ruling, the court stated that while current regulations provide clear provisions for transactions exceeding 1,000,000 Korean won, there are significant legal ambiguities regarding smaller transactions. Regarding the authorities' claims that Dunamu failed to take adequate measures and conducted transactions with unregistered overseas virtual asset providers, the judge concluded that the authorities had not specified what actions the company should have taken.

According to Monitored by Woofun AI, this lack of legislative clarity made it impossible to determine whether Dunamu had acted intentionally or with gross negligence, thus rendering the original penalty decision legally untenable. It is important to note that even if subsequent evaluations conclude that the corrective measures were insufficient, this does not legally justify a conclusion of intentional violation.