South Korea

[현장] 오경석 두나무 대표 “디지털자산 산업, 대한민국의 차세대 성장 엔진 될 것”

Digital Daily | Local Language | News | Nov. 21, 2025 | UndeterminedEconomic Growth

On November 19, 2025, Dunamu CEO Oh Kyung-seok delivered the opening address at the digital asset policy conference 'D-CON 2025' in Seoul. He emphasized that digital asset management is transforming finance and urged the establishment of a national strategy to enhance South Korea's competitiveness in this sector. Oh highlighted the digital asset industry as the next-generation growth engine for South Korea, drawing parallels to past industrial shifts that propelled the country’s economic development.

Oh pointed out key innovations such as payment and settlement advancements through stablecoins, asset tokenization transforming capital markets, and new investment strategies based on digital assets. He noted that global financial hubs including the United States, Singapore, and Hong Kong are prioritizing digital asset competitiveness as a national agenda. Oh called for South Korea to similarly leverage the digital asset industry to secure its economic future.

The conference featured participation from lawmakers across parties, including members of the Democratic Party of Korea, People Power Party, and Reform New Party, as well as domestic digital asset and blockchain experts. Discussions during D-CON 2025 are focused on enhancing global competitiveness of South Korea’s digital asset industry, developing regulatory frameworks, and promoting the sector collaboratively between government and private enterprises.

Oh concluded by stressing that industrial transformation requires cooperation between the state and private sectors and expressed hope that the event would offer valuable insights for policy and corporate strategies. The conference will continue with further sessions and discussions on these themes.

전세계 랜섬웨어 '기승'…한국, 상위 20위 미포함

ZD Net Korea | Local Language | News | Nov. 21, 2025 | Cyber Attacks and Data Loss

Ransomware attacks targeting companies and institutions worldwide have surged in 2025, with the number of incidents from January to October exceeding last year’s total. As of November 19, the global ransomware attacks reached nearly 7,000, marking an all-time high. The United States experienced the most attacks at 2,957 cases, followed by Canada and Germany, while South Korea was not in the top 20 countries but recorded 34 publicly disclosed incidents.

In South Korea, the actual number of ransomware cases appears higher, with 82 incidents reported in the first half of 2025 by the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA). The ransomware groups Qilin, Akira, and Gunra have been particularly active domestically, targeting asset management firms, subsidiaries of major companies, and various industrial firms. Notably, Gunra emerged this year with significant attacks on domestic companies, while Akira, usually not focused on Korea, recently targeted Korean firms’ overseas branches like LG Energy Solution.

Experts emphasize the risk posed by overseas branches or partners with weaker security, as these are often entry points for ransomware attacks. The need for heightened vigilance is underscored by the expanding scope of attacks, including those aimed at critical institutions such as the Hanmaeum Blood Center. Cybersecurity authorities closely monitor these threats, as evidenced by cooperative actions like forwarding attack data to the U.S. CISA.

Joongang Ilbo | English | News | Nov. 21, 2025 | Critical Infrastructure Failure

On the evening of November 19, 2025, Korean internet users experienced a six-hour disruption caused by a global Cloudflare outage. The outage affected major online platforms such as ChatGPT, Google, YouTube, X, and popular PC games like League of Legends. The issue began at 8:20 p.m. and was resolved by 2:06 a.m., with impacts varying from brief delays to complete service halts, depending on the user and device.

The outage, triggered by an internal bug related to an oversized configuration file, highlighted Cloudflare’s extensive influence on internet traffic, as the company manages over 20% of global web traffic. Many users were surprised to realize how interconnected seemingly independent services are, with some unable to work or access platforms like Canva during the outage. Cloudflare denied any cyberattack involvement and resolved the issue by isolating and manually overriding the faulty settings.

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince apologized for the outage, emphasizing the company’s commitment to preventing future incidents by enhancing safeguards, validating configuration files, expanding global kill switches, and improving failure-handling systems. The incident closely followed a major outage at Amazon’s cloud service, which also disrupted various online activities in Korea, underscoring growing concerns about the internet’s reliance on major cloud providers.