Why Korea, Terra’s birthplace, has no LUNC market

South Korea is where Terra began, and it is also where LUNC has been most thoroughly shut out. Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit and Gopax all ended LUNA trading between 16 May and 3 June 2022, and none has listed LUNC since. There is no LUNC/KRW pair on any exchange in the world, so “lunc 시세” or “lunc 가격” in won is always a conversion from the dollar price.

Korean rules have tightened since. Exchanges must report to the Korea Financial Intelligence Unit (KoFIU), the Virtual Asset User Protection Act has been in force since July 2024, and Korea now restricts the apps and websites of unreported offshore exchanges, which are exactly where LUNC trades. A 22% tax on crypto gains is scheduled from 2027 but still disputed. This guide covers each point and the court cases that still follow the Terra name.

Terra’s Korean roots

Terraform Labs was co-founded by two Koreans, Do Kwon (권도형) and Daniel Shin (신현성). Shin also ran the Chai (차이) payments app, which Korean prosecutors later tied to the Terra project. That gave LUNA a strong domestic following long before the crash, and it made Korea one of the hardest-hit countries when UST lost its peg in May 2022.

Prosecutors estimated that roughly 100,000 domestic LUNA holders lost around ₩330 billion, and that the collapse wiped out about ₩50 trillion of market value. Those are the prosecution’s figures from the 2023 indictment, not court findings. The story of the collapse itself, from the first UST wobble on 7 May 2022 to the chain halts, is on our Terra–LUNA crash page.

The Korean name for LUNC is 루나 클래식 (Luna Classic). After the crash the old chain was renamed Terra Classic, its LUNA token became LUNC, and a new chain started with a new LUNA. The two coins are unrelated; our LUNC vs LUNA guide explains why that matters for tickers.

The 2022 delistings, exchange by exchange

Korean exchanges moved quickly once the price collapsed. Upbit designated LUNA a caution asset (유의종목) from 11 May 2022, and the five won exchanges then ended trading one after another. The dates below come from Korean press reports at the time.

Upbit’s LUNA market was on its BTC market, not the won market, and withdrawals stayed open until 19 June 2022. Upbit also pledged the LUNA trading fees it earned between the caution designation and the delisting, 239.13 BTC (about ₩9.46 billion), to investor protection, citing “moral responsibility”, with a committee to decide how to use it. Korbit pledged about ₩10 million. All five exchanges said they would support the airdrop of the new LUNA to holders, and stressed that supporting an airdrop was not a listing.

The industry body DAXA, the alliance of the five won exchanges, was set up in 2022 in response to the Terra collapse. It never designated LUNC as an investment-warning asset, simply because LUNC was already gone from every member exchange.

No won market since 2022

We checked the public market lists of all five exchanges: Upbit’s 875 markets, Bithumb’s KRW and BTC tickers, Coinone’s KRW markets, Korbit’s trading pairs and Gopax’s pairs. None includes LUNC, LUNA or USTC, and there is no evidence any of them plans to relist. In practice, you cannot buy LUNC with won on a Korean-reported exchange.

FSC, KoFIU and the 2024 Act

Korea regulates exchanges through reporting rather than a single licence. The FSC (금융위원회) sets policy, the FSS supervises and inspects, and KoFIU (금융정보분석원) runs virtual asset service provider (VASP) reporting under the Specific Financial Information Act (특금법). Any exchange that offers won trading also needs a real-name bank account (실명확인 입출금계정), such as Upbit’s with K Bank.

The Virtual Asset User Protection Act took effect on 19 July 2024. Exchanges must keep customer deposits at banks, segregate and actually hold customers’ coins, cover hacking and outage losses with insurance or reserves, and monitor and report suspicious trading. Unfair trading can bring criminal penalties. The Act is widely framed as a response to the Terra collapse, though the FSC’s own release talks about price manipulation and asset protection without naming Terra.

In August 2026 an amended enforcement decree added stricter screening of exchanges’ governance, major shareholders and finances, and existing VASPs must file again. A broader “phase 2” law, the Digital Asset Basic Act, had not passed when we checked.

Blocks on offshore exchanges

Because LUNC only trades on offshore venues, Korea’s growing restrictions on unreported exchanges matter directly to anyone hunting for 루나 클래식.

1. Mar 2025KoFIU asks Google to block appsUnreported foreign exchanges such as KuCoin and MEXC were named.
2. Apr 2025Apple blocks 14 exchange appsUnreported exchanges removed from the Korean App Store.
3. 28 Jan 2026Google Play restricts unreported appsBinance included; media described it as Google’s own policy.
4. 13 Oct 202627 exchange websites ordered blockedKoFIU named KuCoin, MEXC and BingX among them.

For operators, running an unreported exchange can bring up to five years in prison or a ₩50 million fine. Users are not the direct target of those penalties, according to experts quoted in Korean media, but they face other risks: no local protection under the 2024 Act, scams that copy blocked sites, and bank or Travel Rule checks when moving coins out of a Korean exchange.

Where Korean LUNC demand goes

With no won market, Korean interest in LUNC flows to offshore exchanges that Korea itself is restricting.

LUNC 시세 in won

The board at the top of this page converts LUNC’s live dollar price into won. Because there is no Korean order book, there is also no local premium for LUNC, the gap Korean traders know as the kimchi premium on other coins. What you see is the global price times the exchange rate.

LUNC’s won price is a small fraction of one won, so the figure carries several decimals. A worked example with round numbers: if LUNC were worth ₩0.05, then 10,000,000 LUNC would be worth ₩500,000 before fees and the network’s 1.5% burn tax on transfers. The LUNC converter handles any amount, and the price page shows the chart.

The 22% tax plan

Korea has not yet taxed crypto gains. Under current law, a 22% tax (20% national plus 2% local) on annual net virtual-asset gains above ₩2.5 million is scheduled for transactions from 1 January 2027, with filing in May 2028. Gains are classed as miscellaneous income (기타소득), and losses cannot be carried forward.

The start date is contested. The finance ministry has backed going ahead in 2027, the ruling Democratic Party wants to wait until the Digital Asset Basic Act passes, and opposition bills would defer the tax to 2030 or scrap it. The outcome was still open when we checked, so the safe wording is “scheduled from 2027, with a further deferral being debated”. Keep records of every trade in won terms either way.

Do Kwon and Daniel Shin

Do Kwon pleaded guilty in New York on 12 August 2025 and was sentenced on 11 December 2025 to 15 years in prison by Judge Paul A. Engelmayer of the Southern District of New York. Korean prosecutors hold a separate 2022 arrest warrant, and reports say he could be transferred to Korea after serving about half of the US term, where he could face trial. He is not in Korean custody.

Daniel Shin and others, about ten people in all, were indicted by the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office on 25 April 2023, without detention. The charges include Capital Markets Act violations, aggravated fraud, breach of trust and embezzlement. Shin denies everything and says he left Terraform two years before the crash. Courts twice rejected arrest warrants, and in 2025 the Supreme Court held that LUNA and UST were not financial investment products under the Capital Markets Act, rejecting a seizure of Shin’s assets, while the fraud charges continued. We could not confirm a first-instance verdict, so treat the case as unresolved.

What Korean readers can actually do

We describe the route as it exists, not as a recommendation. Korean residents who buy LUNC usually buy USDT or another coin on a won exchange, withdraw it after Travel Rule checks, and trade it for LUNC on an offshore exchange that is not reported to KoFIU. That last step is where the regulatory risk sits, and Korea is actively closing doors there. Our exchange list shows which venues still carry LUNC.

If you go ahead, withdraw LUNC to a wallet you control rather than leaving it on an offshore platform; our wallet guide lists native options. Check that LUNC withdrawals are open before you buy, since Binance had them paused for wallet maintenance when we checked, and remember the deposit memo when sending LUNC to any exchange.

For the stablecoin step, CEX.IO, running since 2013, sells USDT by Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay or Google Pay after verification. Korea is not on its unsupported list, but CEX.IO restricts some coins for Korean users, is not reported to KoFIU, and serves Asian users through CEX OVRS LLC of St Kitts and Nevis, which holds no Asian licence. It does not list LUNC.

Need the USDT step?

Buy USDT by card, then trade it for LUNC on an exchange that lists it. CEX.IO is not KoFIU-reported; check Korean rules first.

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Neighbouring markets show the alternatives. Japan never listed LUNC on a registered exchange, Taiwan and Hong Kong also have no local LUNC venue, and only Turkey, Thailand and Indonesia offer local-currency pairs. The Asia hub compares all eleven.

No won pair