By Ian Werther in News — 13 Mar 2026

South Korean police raid lawmaker Kim Byung-gi's son's home, prompting new action

A South Korean independent lawmaker, Kim Byung-gi, faced new police action on his son after a raid targeting the younger Kim’s home in Dongjak District, Seoul. The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency’s Public Crime Investigation Unit searched the residence and the son’s vehicle for about seven hours, from 9:30 a.m. to 4:29 p.m., on February 25, on suspicion of obstruction of business and related charges. The raid occurred after the son was summoned for questioning earlier in the month.

Police had previously summoned Kim’s son on January 25 and February 2 to probe the same allegations, which center on preferential treatment in university admissions and a job at the cryptocurrency exchange Bithub. The ongoing probe has long focused on whether his admission to Soongsil University’s contract-based program and the subsequent employment offer constituted improper favors.

After First World War conscription was introduced in August 1916, a number of men chose to appeal or evade conscription. Some gained and exemption or accepted non-combatant duties: over half of the 43,500 men who appealed on grounds of hardship or engaged in essential work for the public were granted exemption. Some objected to military service on political, moral or religious grounds and defied the process every step of the way. Others faked illness in order to fail the medical examination, and some evaded the state entirely – many ignored the call-up, left the country or went into hiding.
By August 1917 the police were seeking 3,054 defaulters on the run from the military. Being smuggled out of the country in a ship’s coal bunker was one way to escape. Another was to remain in New Zealand and go into hiding. One man joined the circus; another lived a vagrant’s life around Auckland’s One Tree Hill, while in nearby Waitemata Harbour a defaulter took flight in his boat, mooring one wharf ahead of the police for some time.
Others had support from friends and family despite the consequences of harbouring evaders. When police raided the Christchurch home of William and Ella Price early one morning in 1918, they found two defaulters hidden between the roof and the ceiling. One was their son, William Price junior, who had been on the run from the military for four months (personnel file: <a href="http://ndhadeliver.natlib.govt.nz/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE19551027" rel="nofollow">ndhadeliver.natlib.govt.nz/delivery/DeliveryManagerServle...</a>). The other was Frederick Paintin (<a href="http://ndhadeliver.natlib.govt.nz/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE19861016" rel="nofollow">ndhadeliver.natlib.govt.nz/delivery/DeliveryManagerServle...</a>).
Eager to make an example of the family, the military had the parents dragged before the court and punished with six months’ imprisonment. However the jailing of a mother for protecting her son troubled even the stoutest of hearts and a mild outcry led to Cabinet remitting her sentence.
This is the report of the raid carried out on 17 May 1918.
Archives New Zealand reference: AD1 Box 738/ 10/610
<a href="https://archway.archives.govt.nz/ViewFullItem.do?code=22429875" rel="nofollow">archway.archives.govt.nz/ViewFullItem.do?code=22429875</a>

Material from Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga — Representative image for context; not directly related to the specific event in this article. License: CC BY 2.0. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Earlier in January, investigators also searched Kim’s own residence and the National Assembly office building as part of a broader inquiry. At that time, the warrant cited only violations of the Political Funds Act, and investigators said the scope of that search was limited to documents related to those charges. The police noted that the later search was not limited to the son but aimed to secure materials pertaining to the wider suspicions surrounding the lawmaker.

Police officials said the latest raid was intended to gather data not only about the son but about allegations connected to Kim Byung-gi as a whole. The investigation has encompassed multiple lines of inquiry tied to the lawmaker and his family.

Kim Byung-gi attended his third summons on February 11, staying at the station for about five hours before leaving for health reasons. It was reported that he did not sign the interrogation record, a move that could affect the evidentiary value of the statement and potentially complicate the investigation. The third summons had been postponed from February 5 to February 11 at Kim’s request, and prosecutors had considered further rounds of questioning on February 26–27 to clarify facts.

This image shows Detective Inspector Kay Wallace surrounded by computers, mobile phones and digital storage devices seized from the homes of suspected paedophiles.
Kay heads up West Midlands Police’s COST (Child Online Safeguarding Team) – a specialist division dedicated to protecting children from online predators.
Last year the unit – which uses advanced IT techniques to track internet activity and gather ‘e-forensics’ evidence against suspects – made around 60 arrests in the West Midlands.
Targets are monitored online to build up a picture of their offending; many are found to be exchanging indecent images of youngsters on file-sharing sites or sinister forums hidden in the web’s murky depths.
And such is the painstaking research and expertise of this proactive unit, 95 per cent of all the people arrested in the last 12 months – often during dawn raids – were ultimately charged with child abuse offences.
Det Insp Kay Wallace said: “Offenders are getting more and more sophisticated in the way they exchange paedophilic images and develop child abuse websites.
“They will hijack existing, innocent websites and secrete images and chat facilities in hidden areas that people are highly unlikely to stumble across – then they’ll share the complex URL link with other paedophiles. We uncovered a recent example of this where a West Midlands sports club website was hacked into.
“And when sending email links to indecent images offenders will route them via servers dotted around the world in an attempt to blur the identity of both sender and recipient.
“Offenders are sometimes very tech savvy – but we have IT experts within the team who are capable of following their online tracks and exposing their activity. We’re making notable arrests on a daily basis and as a result helping prevent youngsters from becoming victims.”
The team features both investigators and intelligence officers…the latter being ‘e-forensics’ experts who proactively interrogate suspicious internet activity and hunt down paedophiles.
DI Wallace, added: “In traditional policing, forensics is all about fingerprints and DNA which help us pin-point offenders – e-forensics is the online equivalent. Offenders leave traces of their presence as they surf the net; our intelligence experts can pick up these electronic clues and lead us to the perpetrators.
“These trails see our investigations go around the world and just recently we’ve been in touch with counterparts in Canada and Iceland because emails linking to indecent images have gone via servers based there.
“The web has broken down barriers for paedophiles as they can now associate with likeminded individuals anywhere in the world at the click of a mouse. But it’s also helped us as their web footprints usually point us in the direction of other offenders and even to dismantling paedophile rings.”
West Midlands Police’s COST team is acknowledged as being one of the UK’s foremost specialist teams: many of the techniques developed to track offenders have been adopted by other forces and they recently picked up an FBI award!
And the investigative arm of the unit has also scored some impressive results in recent years.
DI Wallace added: “Part of our work involves analysing indecent images to see if they contain clues about the offender. In one case we managed to link part of a road-sign visible on a photo to a Welsh village, where a suspect was discovered, and in another an image was enhanced to reveal a code on a bottle of beer.
“That was linked to a brewery in the US, locations where it was distributed and the subsequent tracking of a child abuse suspect.”
Online grooming of youngsters via chat rooms and webcams is an area COST team officers are encountering more and more.
And DI Wallace urged parents to play an intrusive role in their children’s online activity to make sure they don’t come to any harm whilst surfing the net.
She added: “You need to be absolutely certain who you’re talking to online – your son or daughter may believe they’re chatting with another teenager but, in reality, it could be someone much older with sinister intentions.
“Parents shouldn’t feel awkward asking their children what they’re up to online and who they’re conversing with on social media. Perhaps have an agreement that they only use the internet in an overt manner, in the living room, rather than squirreled away in their bedrooms.
“And ask whether your child really needs a webcam in their bedroom? If a child is persuaded to expose themselves in front of a camera then they’ve lost control of that image or video and it could be floating around online forever.”

The national Child Exploitation & Online Protection (CEOP) team has developed a website – Think You Know – which provides useful web safety advice and a guide on how to report worries or concerns about people you’re chatting to online. — Representative image for context; not directly related to the specific event in this article. License: CC BY-SA 2.0. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

The controversy around Kim’s son first surfaced last September, when media reports suggested preferential treatment in his admission to Soongsil University. The police opened an investigation on September 19 and, despite about six months of inquiry, have yet to issue any dispositive outcome. Kim has denied most of the allegations.

Why this matters beyond Korea: The case touches on ethics and governance issues that are scrutinized by markets and international partners. In South Korea, investigations into lawmakers and their families can influence public trust, political stability, and the policymaking environment. For the global tech and financial sectors, the involvement of a major cryptocurrency exchange in a domestic employment and admissions controversy highlights Korea’s alertness to integrity in the tech and crypto sectors, a area under growing international regulatory focus, including in the United States. The situation could affect investor sentiment, cross-border cooperation on anti-corruption efforts, and the regulatory climate for Korea-based tech and crypto companies that interact with U.S. firms and markets.

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