South Korea's Top 5 Crypto Exchanges Report 57 Hacks and System Failures in 6 Years

Huo Xing Finance reports, according to Yonhap News, South Korea’s five major virtual asset exchanges—Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit, and Gopax—experienced a total of 57 cybersecurity incidents and system failures over the past six years (from 2020 to April 2026), resulting in total compensation of approximately 7 billion KRW (about $5.1 million). By exchange, the number of incidents were: Upbit (26), Bithumb (14), Gopax (8), Coinone (6), and Korbit (3). Notably, Bithumb paid approximately 2.5 billion KRW (about $1.8 million) in compensation due to a BTC misissuance incident in February this year; Upbit paid approximately 790 million KRW (about $570,000) for a November 2025 hacking incident and approximately 3.2 billion KRW (about $2.3 million) for a system failure on December 3, 2024. It is worth noting that the reporting standards for exchange incidents, as well as the scale and form of compensation, vary significantly. For example, Gopax classifies errors occurring during asset list viewing as system failures, whereas Bithumb only counts incidents where all customers experienced difficulties using core services for more than 10 minutes as system failures. Additionally, Bithumb provided some affected users with free fee vouchers instead of cash compensation. System failure compensation amounts were: Upbit (~3.21 billion KRW), Bithumb (~3.2 billion KRW), and Coinone (~49 million KRW). Korbit and Gopax provided no compensation whatsoever.