Lee Jong-wook, commissioner of the Korea Customs Service, left, poses with Kim Min-hye, an official at the Busan Regional Customs, during an award ceremony at the Korea Customs Service headquarters at the Government Complex Daejeon, Thursday. Courtesy of Korea Customs Service
When Kim Min-hye, an official at the Busan Regional Customs' foreign exchange investigation team, was assigned to investigate a suspected illegal foreign exchange scheme involving cryptocurrency, she had little experience with digital assets.
"The term stablecoin itself was unfamiliar to me, and I had never personally traded cryptocurrency. Understanding how cryptocurrency transactions worked was quite a challenge," Kim told The Korea Times in a written interview, Tuesday.
Yet that challenge ultimately led to one of this year's largest foreign exchange crime busts at the Korea Customs Service.
Kim was named customs officer of the month in June after uncovering an unregistered foreign exchange business that illegally transferred about 108 billion won ($73 million) using Tether (USDT), a U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin, according to the customs agency.
