Korean police refer more than 20 Polymarket users to prosecutors on gambling charges
The Gangwon Police Agency has referred more than 20 domestic Polymarket users to South Korea's Prosecution Office on charges of violating Article 246, the country's gambling statute. The referrals mark one of the first known enforcement actions by Korean authorities against users of the prediction market platform, according to reports from Chosun Biz on Saturday, October 10, 2026. The action targets individual traders rather than the platform itself.
Polymarket traders in Korea now face criminal prosecution under a gambling-framing theory that state authorities in the U.S. and Europe are also deploying against the platform. Each jurisdiction that classifies event contracts as gambling rather than financial instruments weakens the CFTC designation Polymarket carries. Korean traders hold positions whose legality rests on how a national police agency labels the product, not on U.S. federal registration.
The Gangwon referral gives other Korean provinces a template to copy, and prosecutors have discretion to expand the target set beyond these first referrals. Polymarket has no direct legal exposure here, but user arrests chill trading volume and complicate any future Korea expansion. The platform now faces user-level enforcement in Asia alongside platform-level bans in Europe and state suits in the U.S., each feeding the gambling classification narrative its competitors exploit.