South Korea Charges 80 Tesla Drivers Over Unauthorized FSD Unlocks

South Korean police have identified 80 Tesla drivers who allegedly activated Full Self-Driving on vehicles not cleared for the feature. The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency confirmed it confiscated 21 hardware devices used to force the system on. Prosecutors are pursuing cases under the Motor Vehicle Management Act, which carries a maximum penalty of two years in prison or a fine of 20 million won, about $15,000.

The unlock modules attach to the car's CAN bus, the internal network linking its electronic control units, and bypass the regional software lock that keeps FSD disabled. The hack works because Tesla ships the same computer in every car regardless of whether the feature has local approval.

How did the drivers do it?

Not all suspects bought ready-made hardware. Several imported finished units from Europe and China, according to Electrek. One driver plugged a European-made module into his own Tesla. Others built devices themselves. One suspect, an IT worker, assembled his unlock unit from instructions found on GitHub, which places the technical barrier for this modification far lower than the price of a fine.

The group also traded tips online on how to stop the car from recording that FSD had been activated. Concealing the activation history points to an effort to evade detection by Tesla, which has been hunting for these devices on its own.

What is the safety case?

South Korea's transport ministry first flagged suspicious activations to police in April. "Safety risks were confirmed, including the possibility that FSD may fail to properly recognize driving conditions or operate differently from the driver's intentions," a police official said at the time.

The legal exposure is steep relative to the benefit. Many of the accused owners had already paid for the driver-assistance feature. The fine of roughly $15,000 now exceeds the cost of the software itself.

Why is FSD restricted in Korea at all?

The root cause is a certification gap. Tesla began offering FSD (Supervised) in South Korea in late 2025, but only on US-built Model S, Model X and Cybertruck units, which skip local safety certification under the Korea-US free trade agreement. Model 3 and Model Y vehicles arrive from Giga Shanghai and have not passed Korean certification.

Estimates of the eligible fleet vary. Carisyou Data Lab figures cited by MK last month put eligible cars at 47,458 of 229,331 Korean Teslas, or 20.7 percent.

Is this the first crack in Tesla's software locks?

No. In August 2023, researchers exploited a hardware security flaw in the AMD processor powering Tesla's media control unit to unlock certain paid features. The exploit targeted the AMD-based system-on-chip, although the researchers did not confirm that every premium feature could be opened.

Tesla has also drawn regulatory attention over software behavior. In December 2021, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation after an over-the-air update let drivers play games while the vehicle was in motion. Hardware reliability has posed separate challenges; last year Tesla detailed how it identifies defective processor cores in its Dojo AI supercomputers, where a single faulty component can compromise lengthy training runs.

The Korean investigation follows Tesla's own countermeasures. In April the company began remotely detecting unlock devices and disabling FSD access on affected cars. It has warned owners that unauthorized modifications can void warranty coverage and leave them liable for crashes. With only a fifth of the Korean fleet certified for FSD and criminal penalties now on the table, the commercial pressure on Tesla to certify its Shanghai-built models locally will only intensify.