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South Korea's Gangwon Provincial Police Agency has referred 18 Polymarket users to prosecutors, out of 26 it identified and booked, over a combined 17.6 billion won ($12.7 million) in bets placed on the prediction market, according to The Block's reporting on the case. The largest single stake identified was about 5.7 billion won, or roughly $4.1 million.
Investigators identified the users by tracing publicly available blockchain records with open-source intelligence techniques, according to CryptoTimes' coverage of the investigation, working around the lack of a conventional customer database on Polymarket's non-custodial, peer-to-peer platform. Police are charging the users under Article 246 of South Korea's Criminal Act, arguing that betting on Polymarket's yes-or-no event contracts constitutes gambling because users are staking assets on outcomes they cannot control. Polymarket users have pushed back on that framing, arguing the platform functions more like a derivatives market, with order-book trading and the ability to exit a position before an event resolves, rather than a one-way wager.
The charges follow South Korea's Korea Communications Standards Commission blocking domestic access to Polymarket in August, after determining its winner-takes-all structure and reliance on unpredictable real-world events created an illegal gambling environment regardless of the platform's technical design or lack of Korean-language service. The regulator rejected Polymarket's argument that its non-custodial structure placed it outside the reach of Korean law.
The 18 referrals mark South Korea's first cases testing how its courts will classify prediction-market betting, with the outcome likely to hinge on whether judges treat Polymarket's contracts as gambling or as a form of derivatives trading. No court has yet ruled on the distinction, and the remaining eight users booked by police face further investigation before any decision on referral.
