Young South Koreans are still buying drugs with Bitcoin

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Source: RomanR/Adobe

The crypto-fueled drug trade is still booming in South Korea — and a recent police crackdown on online drug dealing in bitcoin (BTC) and altcoin has done little to curb the spread. demand for narcotics marketed on the Web.

Per Kuki News, Twitter and Telegram are always teeming with posts from South Korean drug traffickers looking for customers – and potential buyers looking for dealers. Many resellers have written that they can offer “domestic delivery”.

Cryptonews.com also uncovered a number of recent Korean-language Twitter posts using narcotics-related slang. Many of them directed users to Kakao chat rooms or Telegram channels. And many of these chat rooms and channels seemed to be populated by hundreds of young South Korean users. These users have written in various ways – anonymously – about their experiences of using and buying drugs.

Kuki News reported that on one of the Telegram channels he visited, a user posted a photo of several bags of narcotics and his own gloved hands. The accompanying caption read, “Time to go do some deliveries.”

South Korean Crackdown on Bitcoin Fueled Drug Deals – How Effective Was It?

The outlet noted that while South Korean law enforcement has the power to pressure domestic chat apps such as Kakao to hand over details of users they suspect are involved in trafficking of drugs, this is not the case for “overseas” platforms such as Telegram.

Drug buyers and dealers seem to be aware of this and seem to have continued to use the platforms with impunity – despite a recent crackdown.

While police have struggled to shut down social media activity like the one described above, they have been more successful in tracking down drug payments made using BTC.

Agents have invested heavily in blockchain analysis software and other tools. They say it helped them track down a number of drug dealers and users. Police have also received training that officials say will help local forces find and prosecute narcotics traffickers who use crypto.

Typically, dealers in South Korea use “neutral” methods to distribute narcotics. Here, customers pay upfront in BTC and dealers later leave bags of drugs hidden in public places for buyers to collect once the dealers leave the area. But the police have also used this tactic against them – coupling blockchain transaction data with CCTV footage to secure convictions.

Police say their crackdown has worked. The National Police Agency’s newly formed drug task force arrested 1,495 drug-using offenders last year, at least 533 of whom used BTC or altcoins to buy or sell narcotics.

But the social media problem seems to point to a growing problem: Last year, a total of 12,387 people were arrested for distributing or using drugs, according to police data. This is a 17% increase from 2021 figures and the highest number of drug-related arrests ever recorded in the country.

And drug addicts are getting younger: 454 of the 12,387 arrested were teenagers.

The same outlet noted that a recent drug case in the city of Incheon saw three high school students arrested for allegedly buying drugs online – using darkweb portals and crypto payments.

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