Regulator rules Polymarket illegal gambling in South Korea

• South Korea’s Korea Communications Standards Commission (KCSC) has ordered a nationwide ISP block on Polymarket, ruling the platform provides an illegal gambling environment.
• The corrective order, approved on August 18, 2026, follows a formal review the KCSC opened on July 6, after police began investigating local users in late May.
• South Korea joins more than 30 jurisdictions, including France, Germany, Australia and Indonesia, that have restricted access to Polymarket.

South Korea has ordered domestic internet providers to cut off Polymarket, with the country’s media regulator ruling that the crypto-settled prediction market amounts to illegal gambling for local users.

The Korea Communications Standards Commission (KCSC) approved the block on August 18, 2026, through its communications review subcommittee.

Gambling law breach

The KCSC found Polymarket’s operations fall foul of South Korea’s Criminal Act, which covers facilitating gambling and opening a venue for it. Markets tied to sporting outcomes also breach the National Sports Promotion Act, regulators said.

Officials pointed to Polymarket’s winner-takes-all design, where users trade on outcomes from elections to weather, as the core problem: it rewards and punishes participants based on chance rather than skill, the hallmark regulators use to separate betting from investing.

The case started in late May, when police opened a probe into local users. The KCSC’s communications review subcommittee launched its own formal review on July 6, weighing the platform’s mechanics and user complaints before voting to block it.

Individuals caught gambling illegally in South Korea face fines up to 10 million won, roughly $7,080, and VPN users trying to dodge the block remain exposed to the same penalty.

Defence rejected

Polymarket told the commission its non-custodial, peer-to-peer model and reliance on smart contracts meant it never acted as an operator in the legal sense. The firm also cited the removal of its Korean-language interface and its lack of won support as proof it wasn’t chasing the domestic market.

“Because the platform operates via non-custodial peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions and smart contracts, we do not act as an ‘organiser’,”

Polymarket said in a statement of opinion submitted to the commission.

Regulators weren’t swayed. Decentralised infrastructure and a missing Korean front end don’t exempt a platform from domestic law, the KCSC ruled, since South Korean users could still trade on Polymarket with crypto regardless of language or currency support.

Global block map grows

South Korea now sits alongside more than 30 jurisdictions restricting Polymarket, with Germany, Australia and Indonesia among the regulators citing similar gambling concerns.

iGaming Republic reported in July on how France and the Czech Republic moved to block Polymarket, even as Gibraltar and Malta explored licensing prediction markets instead.

Spain took a similar line, ordering Polymarket and rival Kalshi blocked, with India moving against Polymarket earlier in 2026 under its new online gaming law.

Not every market is closing the door. Polymarket’s regulated US exchange has just begun testing parlay contracts, a reminder that the same product is being licensed in one jurisdiction while blocked outright in another.

That split leaves operators eyeing prediction markets in Asia with a narrower playbook: license locally, or stay out. Blockchain settlement and a missing local front end clearly won’t buy them room to manoeuvre with the KCSC watching.