The Korean ICO ban which comes just weeks after the China issued a blanket ban on this nascent funding model and could have far reaching implications , the degree of which will correlate to the extent of the prohibition. Korea was seen as one of the markets most likely to benefit from the void created by China’s ICO ban , & the country’s most popular messaging app had recently announced the creation of a new crypto-currency exchange that would be supporting more than 100 altcoins. A comprehensive ICO ban could potentially call Korea’s role within the ecosystem into question , while a ban restricted to domestic ICOs would be much less disruptive for other people.
In either case, the ban will likely put short term downward pressure on the eth price as investors sort out the details. A great deal of eth volume is concentrated on the Korean exchanges , & it is likely that demand will diminish if local investors are prohibited from contributing to Initial Coin Offerings or trading for the ERC20 tokens. That said, the markets have already demonstrated their ability to weather the China ban on ICOs and bitcoin exchanges, so investors have the reason to believe they will endure this storm as well.