According to the local media organization News1, the Seoul Southern Regional Court joined the judge Kim at his first hearing.

Kim was accused of misinterpreting his assets to the National Assembly to hide the great profit he had obtained before the changes in crypto currency laws. This event was known as the “Coin Gate” scandal in the public.

The fact that Kim was an authorized name in the South Korean government caused criticism that it provided the advantage of prior information about the bill that would require the notification of crypto assets.

Prosecutors claimed that Kim transferred the money he had obtained by selling crypto assets to the bank account and that this amount matched the total value of crypto assets. For this reason, it was claimed that Kim had an unfair advantage in the declaration of assets in 2021 and 2022 and prevented the authorities from fulfilling their duties.

However, Judge Jeong Woo -ong said there was no evidence that Kim has committed any crime in his case. The judge also stated that it was not obligatory to declare crypto assets at that time.

“Crypto assets were not included in the category of assets that should be declared at that time. Therefore, there is not enough evidence to say that Kim hides or mislead the authorities. ” Jeong said that the case was evaluated in a similar way by the ethical committee.

Acknowledgating that Kim’s information about crypto assets is inadequate or incorrect, the judge said that this could not be interpreted as the authorities block their duties.

In December 2024, the prosecutors were sentenced to six months’ imprisonment on the grounds that the National Assembly Ethics Committee had prevented their duties.

According to the allegations of the prosecutor’s office, who declared that his total assets were about 1.2 billion Won ($ 825.526). However, the prosecutors claimed that Kim’s real crypto assets were over 9.9 billion Won ($ 6.8 million) and deliberately kept this information.

Prosecutors argued that Kim hidden their existence by turning their crypto beings into money and thus avoiding the supervision of the authorities. However, the Court found that there was no violation of the law in this process and found Kim innocent.

This decision reunited in South Korea’s crypto asset regulations and discussions about the financial declarations of politicians. Kim’s acquittal brought questions about how effective the control of government officials on crypto assets.

The new crypto laws, which came into force in South Korea in 2024, require authorities to fully announce their crypto currency assets. However, these laws were not yet in force when Kim was tried.

Kim’s acquittal has led to controversy that more arrangements should be made on how to integrate crypto assets into the financial declaration system.