Seoul police have booked 80 people for using aftermarket devices to switch on Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” in cars that aren’t allowed to run it in South Korea. Officers also seized 21 of the devices.
The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency announced the case on Tuesday. It’s the largest enforcement action yet against the FSD “jailbreak” hardware that has spread through China, Europe, and Korea over the past year.
Police say the suspects either imported the unlock modules from Europe and China or made their own. One plugged a European-made unit into his own Tesla. Another, an IT worker, built his device with information he found on GitHub.
Suspects also swapped advice online on how to unlock FSD and how to stop the car from keeping any record that it had been activated.
They’re charged under Korea’s Motor Vehicle Management Act, which bans unauthorized software changes that can affect a vehicle’s safety. The penalty is up to two years in prison or a fine of up to 20 million won (about $15,000).
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport asked police to look into it back in April after finding signs of unauthorized activation. A police official told Korea JoongAng Daily that “safety risks were confirmed,” including the possibility of FSD misreading driving conditions. The investigation is ongoing, with police consulting the ministry and the Korea Transportation Safety Authority on the technical side.
Most Korean Teslas can’t legally run FSD
Tesla launched FSD (Supervised) in South Korea in late 2025, but only on US-built vehicles: Model S, Model X, and Cybertruck. Those cars are exempt from Korean safety certification under the Korea-US free trade agreement. The Model 3 and Model Y, which Tesla ships to Korea from Giga Shanghai, haven’t cleared Korea’s safety standards for the feature.
And those two models are the bulk of the fleet. Citing Carisyou Data Lab, Korea JoongAng Daily reports that 47,458 of the 229,311 Teslas on Korean roads as of August, or 20.7%, can legally use FSD.
That number doesn’t match the government’s own count from a few months earlier. In May, data released by lawmaker Park Yong-gap showed just 4,292 of 180,684 registered Teslas (2.4%) were eligible: 2,708 Model X, 1,193 Model S, and 391 Cybertruck. Either way, the vast majority of Korean Tesla owners can’t legally use FSD, and some of them paid over $6,000 for it anyway.
The hardware is the same, which is why the hack works. The modules plug into the car’s CAN bus and get around the regional software lock.
Tesla has been fighting the devices itself. In April, it started remotely detecting them and stripping FSD from affected cars, warned owners they’d be fully liable for any crash and could lose warranty coverage, and permanently banned some Chinese owners from FSD.
Electrek’s Take
Top comment by D B
Elon should have anticipated that people would create unlock devices. He's ultimately responsible for this, and should be on the hook to pay these people's fines.
It’s easy to see why people do this. Picture a Korean owner of a Shanghai-built Model Y who paid for FSD, watching the Model X next door run the same software on the same computer. That’s frustrating.
Tesla sold FSD to owners of cars it had no regulatory path to enable in Korea, the same way it sold “Full Self-Driving” in Europe for years while approval kept slipping. It only dropped the name there this month after Germany pushed back. Sell a feature people can’t legally use and you create the market for the jailbreak.
Korea has now shown it will actually prosecute. So will Tesla refund the Korean owners who bought a feature their cars may never be allowed to run?
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