South Korean Crypto Market Regains After Martial Law Ends

Since South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declared an emergency yesterday, major cryptos like XRP, Bitcoin (BTC) and Dogecoin (DOGE) dipped on Upbit but within hours the crypto market started recovering when martial law was withdrawn. This happened while crypto trading has outperformed the stock market in South Korea.

President Yoon Suk Yeol declared the withdrawal of the martial law within 6 hours of imposing it.

At around 4:30 am today local time the South Korean government held a cabinet meeting and lifted martial law as 190 members of the 300-member parliament rejected it.

Lifting martial law, President Yoon said “I will accept the National Assembly’s request and lift it”. As per South Korean Law, if the parliament vetoes it then the government has to lift martial law.

Earlier on Tuesday, President Yoon suddenly declared on live television that South Korea is imposing martial law which rattled the global political stage with the White House expressing concern “about the developments” seen on the “ground in the R.O.K.”

President Yoon revealed that he declared emergency and imposed martial law following threats from North Korea's communist forces. The measure was taken to “eliminate anti-state elements.”

This triggered widespread decline in the crypto market especially, for XRP, Bitcoin, and Dogecoin which dipped the most. Although the decline was observed across all crypto exchanges, the South Korean exchange Upbit was most affected.

“This is an unavoidable measure to ensure the freedom and safety of the people and guarantee the sustainability of the nation against the unrest stirred by these subversive, anti-state elements,” Yoon had said while imposing martial law.

After the martial law was lifted today morning, XRP, Bitcoin and Ethereum recovered. XRP which suffered the most also recovered the most - 9.2%, followed by Ethereum's 3.3% and Bitcoin's 2.4% recovery.

“We are relieved President Yoon has reversed course on his concerning declaration of martial law and respected the ROK National Assembly’s vote to end it,” responded a White House spokesperson.

A day before this martial law imposition, South Korea retail crypto trading volumes soared, hitting the second-highest in 2024. This sparked a frenzy amongst crypto traders who looked for high-momentum altcoins like XRP and Cardano.

This caused XRP to cross the $6.3 billion trading volume in South Korea followed by Dogecoin at $1.6 billion while Stellar (XLM), Ethereum Name Service (ENS) and Hedera (HBAR) recorded $1.3 billion, $900 million and $800 million respectively.

At press time, XRP was trading at $2.40 with a 5.71% decline in the last 24 hours including a 54.73% decrease in its trading volume which stood at $21.32 billion and the market cap slumped to $135.73 billion. In the meantime, Dogecoin declined 0.67% to trade at $0.4027 while its trading volume decreased 35.46% to touch $6.36 billion and the market cap fell to $59.20 billion. Bitcoin declined 0.36% to trade at $95039 with a 12.98% drop in its trading volume while Ethereum gained 5.83% to trade at $3785 with a 19.57% increase in its trading volume.