Will Korea Ever Allow Play-to-Earn? Inside the Fight Over the Game Law Rewrite

Three days before South Korea's June 2025 presidential election, a surprisingly niche question made the campaign pages: should Koreans be allowed to play blockchain games that pay out tokens? The answers from the three main camps were telling. One party said no. One said nothing. One said yes, with conditions.

Eighteen months later, the question has moved from campaign trail to committee room. In September 2025, Democratic Party lawmaker Jo Seung-rae proposed a full rewrite of the Game Industry Promotion Act, the 2006 law at the root of Korea's P2E ban. The bill does not mention crypto as a goal. But one clause, which would limit the ban on gambling-style prizes to arcade-type games, has turned it into the most important P2E story in Korea. As of November 2026, it has not passed, and the reports we found through August 2026 describe forums and seminars rather than committee votes.

The campaign moment

Blockmedia surveyed the parties in late May 2025. Its findings:

• Democratic Party (Lee Jae-myung): opposed. Hwang Hee-doo, who headed the party's game special committee, said internal debate had concluded against P2E, and committee vice chair Jo Seung-rae said the position was still opposition. That was notable, because Lee had sounded somewhat positive about P2E back in 2021.
• People Power Party (Kim Moon-soo): no explicit position. Kim stressed general deregulation of games, but the official pledge book did not mention blockchain or NFTs.
• Reform Party (Lee Jun-seok): the most open. He proposed allowing P2E models that reward creation and contributing to a game's ecosystem rather than gambling.

Lee Jae-myung won. So the man who now leads the push to rewrite the game law comes from the party that, in May 2025, said it opposed P2E.

What the bill actually does

The rewrite is broad and mostly not about blockchain:

• It renames the law around game culture and industry promotion and redefines games as cultural content.
• It creates a Game Promotion Agency, split off from the Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA), with a renamed game management committee under it focused mainly on arcade games.
• It divides games into digital games and location-based games (arcades and similar venues).
• It moves more digital-game rating to private self-rating operators.
• It adds copyright infringement as a ground for revoking a rating, and would punish users who habitually use hacking programs in ways that seriously disrupt others.

Then comes the line that matters for P2E. Under today's law, Article 28(3) bans prizes that encourage gambling for all games. In the bill, the equivalent clause, Article 59(1), applies only to location-based games. Digital games, which include every online and mobile title, would be outside it.

Why one clause is so explosive

Korea has blocked P2E mainly through the prize ban: in the 2023 court cases, judges treated tradable NFTs and tokens as gambling-style prizes (the rulings). Take digital games out of that rule and the main legal tool against P2E weakens.

Supporters of the bill say the separate cash-out ban in Article 32(1)7 stays, so P2E risks can still be controlled. Critics are not convinced. In a December 2025 column, Lee Cheol-woo, chair of the Korea Game Users Association, pointed to a 2009 Supreme Court ruling (2009도7238) that limited the cash-out ban to items obtained by chance. Most MMORPG-style P2E rewards come from time and skill, so, he argued, the cash-out ban alone would be hard to apply. His recommendation: keep the prize ban and build a separate framework for P2E.

The seminar circuit

Through 2026, the bill has been argued over in public.

At a 13 March 2026 seminar hosted by the Korea Game Policy Association in Gwanghwamun, lawyer Kim Won of Kim & Chang said Korean companies had wanted coin ecosystems linking games but faced strict regulation and lost lawsuits, and he expected change if the bill passed. Hwang Jeong-woo of Yulchon warned that without a regulatory basis, prizes could become unlimited. Speakers also flagged that web board games such as hwatu and poker would count as digital games, and so could escape prize limits too.

At a 6 August 2026 forum run by the Game Self-Governance Organization of Korea (GSOK), the mood was more reformist. GSOK chair Hwang Seong-gi said gambling rules stuck in the "Bada Iyagi trauma" were holding the industry back (why that scandal matters) and called for the bill to be enacted even if some provisions need changes. Seoul National University professor Yoo Byung-jun proposed a four-tier risk system based on chance, cash convertibility, addictiveness, investability and opacity, rather than blanket bans.

The industry's view

Korean publishers have spent four years building blockchain games for everyone except Koreans. Nexon's MapleStory N is global-only, with the company saying in 2025 it had no plans for a domestic launch. Neowiz decided in April 2025 to close its Intella X blockchain platform as token trading dried up. Industry voices call rating refusals excessive regulation, since ordinary game items already have cash value on outside markets. Academics such as Kim Jung-tae of Dongyang University argue blockchain games should be judged by ownership, because players gain real rights over their assets.

What it would mean for players

Even if the bill passed tomorrow, Korean players would not wake up to a flood of token games. Ratings would still be required, the cash-out ban would still be on the books, and the courts' 2023 view that tokens can make a game a "new form" of gambling game rests partly on a separate definition clause. Lawyers on both sides expect lawmakers to add anti-gambling safeguards before any vote. What would change is the starting point: instead of P2E being presumed illegal, regulators would have to argue each case on risk.

By the numbers

• 2006: year the current game law was enacted
• 3 days: before the June 2025 election, when P2E became a campaign topic
• September 2025: Jo Seung-rae's full rewrite is proposed
• Article 59(1): the clause limiting the prize ban to location-based games
• 4 tiers: the risk system proposed at the August 2026 forum

What to watch

• Committee review. The bill needs to clear the National Assembly's culture committee, where the ministry's objections will be tested.
• A P2E carve-out or framework. Critics and some supporters both suggest separate P2E rules, rather than a silent gap.
• The cash-out ban. If the prize clause changes, expect a new fight over how Article 32(1)7 and the 2009 precedent apply to tokens.

WGC's take: This is not a "legalise P2E" bill, and nobody serious is pitching it that way. It is a long-overdue modernisation of a 2006 law with one clause that could open a door almost by accident. Korea's best outcome is a deliberate decision, made in daylight, about whether and how token games should be allowed, not a loophole discovered after the fact (the ban explained).