South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Gopax suspended trading and standard withdrawals on Friday after receiving an email threatening a cyberattack. The exchange stated it has not suffered any actual loss of assets but initiated emergency protocols to secure customer funds.
Gopax halted standard deposit and withdrawal services at 2:55 p.m. local time, according to Yonhap News Agency. Trading was subsequently stopped at 3:53 p.m. local time. With the trading engine offline, all open orders were canceled, Chosun Biz reported.
Manual Withdrawal Process
Direct withdrawals through the exchange’s website and mobile application remain unavailable. Customers seeking to withdraw assets must apply through the customer support center, where requests are processed manually following internal verification. While deposits were initially paused alongside withdrawals, later Korean coverage indicated that deposit services had been restored, though web and app withdrawals remained shut.
The suspension was triggered by a hacking-threat email received by the exchange. A Gopax official told Yonhap that the email came from a party claiming it could hack the platform, but the threat itself had not been verified. To ensure the safe custody of user assets, Gopax said it plans to transfer all virtual assets to cold wallets for storage, remarks carried by Seoul Economic Daily showed.
The company has not set a date to reopen trading or restore standard withdrawal functions.
Separate Data Incident
The incident follows a separate security issue disclosed earlier this year. From early September, abnormal access to some user accounts resulted in the leakage of personal information belonging to seven customers and two current or former employees, with further leakage confirmed last month, Yonhap’s Korean dispatch reported.
Gopax has treated that data breach as separate from Friday’s threat email, and any link between the two events has not been confirmed.
