NFT of Top South Korean Politician’s Pro-Crypto Social Media Post Sells for $2.5k

An anonymous buyer has forked out 2,000 KLAY tokens, worth over ($2,500), for a non-fungible token (NFT) of a leading former South Korean minister’s Facebook post that criticized the government’s hardline crypto policy.

The article was penned by the former Minister of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises and Startups Park Young Sun, a key figure in the ruling Democratic Party. Park unsuccessfully ran as the party’s mayoral candidate of Seoul last year. She has also made a number of pro-business statements supporting the cause of domestic blockchain and crypto firms.

According to a report from the Korean-language publication Hanguk Kyungjae, the token was sold via the OpenSea platform on the Klaytn blockchain protocol – which was developed by a subsidiary of the chat app giant Kakao.

Park created the post back in January 2018 in response to comments from the then-Minister of Justice Park Sang-ki, who had claimed that closing all domestic crypto exchanges was the “only way” to calm “speculative fever” in the crypto markets.

Viral Post

At the time, Park was serving as a member of the National Assembly’s Planning and Finance Committee. In the Korean-language post, which went viral on a number of social media platforms in early 2018, Park wrote that there would be serious “side effects” from closing exchanges, namely that “money” would have “no choice but to flow abroad.” She added that the move would stifle innovation “for blockchain and cryptocurrency”-related firms working in “the era of Industry 4.0.”

And Park concluded that it would soon be “impossible to artificially block the circulation and markets for cryptocurrency.”

Park is a key supporter of the presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung, who will represent the Democratic Party when South Korea goes to the polls for March 8’s general election. Lee has made a number of pro-crypto manifesto pledges and was instrumental in driving the National Assembly to delay a proposed crypto tax law until 2023.

Crypto Donation

The former minister was quoted as explaining that she had paid a 2.5% commission fee on the sale, and that she “planned” to use the funds to make a “meaningful” “digital asset donation” to a cause that “strives to solve social problems.”

Park said, “I feel like I have taken the first step into a digital world where we can share values ​​with one another.”