South Korea has set a February 2027 launch for its tokenized securities market, unveiling a three-stage roadmap that will move stocks, bonds and funds onto distributed ledgers before eventually wiring securities settlement to stablecoin-based payments — one of Asia's most detailed tokenization timelines to date.
The Financial Services Commission said Friday that the first phase begins when amendments to the Electronic Registration Act take effect on Feb. 4, 2027, expanding tokenization beyond fractional investment products and creating a legal route for conventional securities to be issued and managed on blockchains. FSC Vice Chairman Kwon Dae-young unveiled the policy at the third meeting of a public-private consultative group attended by the Financial Supervisory Service, financial institutions, industry groups and private-sector experts.
What tokenized securities get at each stage
During the first phase, privately pooled money market funds, bonds reserved for institutional investors, unlisted stocks issued through trust structures and publicly offered fractional investment securities all become eligible for tokenization. The legal foundation was laid in January, when the National Assembly passed amendments recognizing distributed ledgers as securities registries while keeping tokenized instruments inside the country's existing securities laws — a deliberate design choice that treats the ledger as new plumbing, not a new asset class.
The second phase would open tokenization to all publicly offered securities, with no fixed start date because implementation depends on first-stage results and how quickly financial companies adopt the required technology. The third phase is the most ambitious: onchain payment infrastructure linked to stablecoins, bringing the cash side of securities transactions onto digital rails. Its timing hinges on pending stablecoin legislation — the Digital Asset Framework Act — that lawmakers are trying to complete during the fall session, and stablecoin rules remain the largest unresolved piece of Korea's digital asset program. Technical infrastructure is advancing in parallel: Samsung SDS won a contract this year to build a token securities platform for the Korea Securities Depository, expected to be complete around the time the amended laws take effect, connecting the KSD's electronic securities account infrastructure with blockchain records for issuance, circulation checks, rights management and monitoring.
Retail limits and the new issuer structure
The FSC's guardrails show how regulators plan to control risk while opening the market. For non-monetary trust beneficiary certificates, the maximum individual subscription is the lower of 30 million won (about $22,000) or 5% of total issuance volume, and publicly offered allocations must include a portion reserved for retail investors with a minimum amount distributed equally. Retail investors using over-the-counter exchanges face an annual net purchase ceiling of 100 million won (about $74,000) on each OTC platform. Existing financial investment companies need no separate authorization solely for handling tokenized securities — firms already licensed for the relevant activity can operate within their permitted business areas — though OTC intermediaries must consult the Financial Supervisory Service in advance, and a new OTC licensing category for debt securities is planned.
The roadmap also creates an "issuer account management entity" structure: companies approved under the system can manage their own securities accounts instead of relying exclusively on financial institutions, provided they maintain at least 4 billion won (close to $3 million) in equity capital, employ personnel responsible for account management and internal controls, assign two employees to computer and IT systems, and meet specified cybersecurity standards. The Korea Securities Depository has prepared screening criteria for the distributed ledgers used by securities firms, testing core issuance and circulation functions along with contingency procedures for system failures.
The regional race Korea is joining
The plan situates Korea in a fast-moving Asian contest. Deposit-token trials have already expanded to nine Korean banks, the Bank of Korea has studied tokenized bank deposits as settlement money for tokenized bonds and shares, and Shinhan Asset Management recently signed an agreement to test a tokenized fund denominated in Korean won on Solana, covering investor verification, issuance, distribution and onchain liquidity. Japan, meanwhile, is studying blockchain infrastructure that could eventually process publicly traded stocks and government bonds. The London Stock Exchange is building its own tokenized route, the SEC is rewriting transfer agent rules for tokenized securities, and the private-market tokenization boom has already drawn corporate pushback — evidence that jurisdictions want the technology under their own law rather than imported through offshore platforms.
Korea's approach is distinctive for its sequence: legal recognition first, retail caps second, stablecoins last. Most jurisdictions have moved in the opposite order, letting stablecoins run ahead of securities rules and then retrofitting supervision. If the February 2027 launch holds, Korea will offer the first large-scale test of a securities market where the registry, the issuance and eventually the settlement cash all live on infrastructure the regulator designed — and a template other markets will be measured against.
