What is Upbit?

So, I'm sitting here staring at a ridiculous 43% overnight spread on a niche altcoin, and all the liquidity roads lead straight to Seoul.

It's driving me crazy.

Literally every single pricing anomaly I track is currently bottlenecking at one specific order book. I've been actively trying to map out Asian market arbitrage opportunities—specifically analyzing the lingering "Kimchi Premium" divergence that totally wrecked my tracking models back in 2021—and I keep hitting a massive, frustrating brick wall.

So, seriously, what is Upbit exactly in practical terms for someone sitting completely outside of South Korea?

Obviously, I can read a basic wiki page. I know it's a colossal exchange operated by Dunamu (heavily tied to the Kakao messaging app), boasting billions in daily trading volume. You see the sheer size of those numbers on trackers, right? But I'm looking at their actual user onboarding flow right now and feeling completely alienated as a Western trader. I tried to register an account yesterday morning, only to get instantly smacked down by an aggressive KYC prompt demanding highly specific localized verification.

My Specific Access Roadblocks

Here is the exact friction checklist I compiled while attempting to sneak onto their platform:

• Identity Walls: Mandatory South Korean phone number verification that must perfectly match a resident ID card.
• Banking Silos: You seemingly have to integrate with K-Bank (a local digital bank) just to touch the KRW fiat pairs.
• Weird Pairings: Tons of localized tokens experiencing massive volume spikes that literally do not exist on western alternatives like Kraken.

Are non-residents just permanently locked out of this specific liquidity pool? You definitely can't bypass hardcore telecom identity restrictions with a basic off-the-shelf VPN, right? If anyone here has actually cracked this onboarding process or understands how international users legally trade these isolated KRW pairs, I desperately need your logic map.