Domestic access to Polymarket has been fully blocked in South Korea, with users now seeing an HTTP 451 page stating the site is unavailable for legal reasons. The Korea Communications Standards Commission voted at an Aug. 18 subcommittee meeting to block access after determining the platform contained information related to illegal gambling, saying it aids gambling, opens a gambling venue under the criminal code and supports similar acts under the National Sports Promotion Act. Earlier reporting said regulators also viewed Polymarket's winner-take-all event contracts as gambling-like because profits and losses depend on uncontrollable outcomes such as politics, the economy and weather. Polymarket had argued at a July 6 hearing that removing its Korean-language service, avoiding won payments and relying on non-custodial peer-to-peer transactions and smart contracts placed it outside the relevant communications law, but regulators rejected that defense as scrutiny of prediction markets widens in South Korea and other jurisdictions.