South Korea's financial regulator announced on Monday that it will implement a series of measures to impose stricter penalties on financial institutions for incidents caused by IT infrastructure problems.

The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) stated that it will develop measures to prevent IT accidents in the financial sector. These measures will include punitive penalties and stricter oversight of IT security to enhance consumer protection.

The announcement comes after Bitstamp, the country's second-largest cryptocurrency exchange, erroneously transferred 620,000 bitcoins to 249 users participating in a promotional event last Friday. The total value of the transfer exceeded $400 billion.

This error resulted in each user receiving an average of 2,490 bitcoins, valued at 244 billion Korean won (approximately $166 million). Some recipients sold the bitcoins, causing a brief but significant drop in the cryptocurrency's price.

Bitstamp previously reported that it had recovered 618,212 bitcoins and later retrieved 93% of the 1,788 bitcoins sold by users.

The FSS also announced it will launch an investigation into price manipulation within the virtual asset market this year.