Not sure what the rationale is behind hitting crypto owners harder than people investing in the stock market
One possibility is that their aim is to dissuade people from getting involved in crypto by making the stock market more appealing. Perhaps in an attempt to protect citizens from scams and extreme volatility in an unregulated market. No evidence for this though, just speculating.
It seems really strange to me that news stories like this are appearing over 10 years after the creation of bitcoin. It amazes me that there are still governments (and not just Korea's) that haven't completely figured out to handle cryptocurrency from a regulatory standpoint. It's still like the wild west sometimes.
I think a lot of governments didn't really understand it, and hoped it would just go away. Obviously that's not happened, and as the amount of money in crypto grows, governments are being forced to face it. The fact that there is such wide variation between jurisdictions on not only what taxes to apply but also, fundamentally, on what bitcoin 'is', suggests that there is still a lack of understanding, and that new definitions and laws are required to meet this new technical innovation.