韩国加密货币市场：2026 年剩余时间指南

Key Takeaways

The Bank of Korea’s CBDC has entered live-transaction testing under Project Han River Phase 2, but a won-denominated stablecoin still has no legislative basis.

The revised STO bill has passed, but permitted assets and licensing details are left to presidential decree. The market’s direction will be set when those regulations appear, not when the bill passed.

With the consultative council aligned on a tokenization roadmap for stocks, bonds, and money market funds, the priority is bringing proven, standardized securities on-chain rather than sourcing new fractional-investment assets.

Hana Bank’s stake in Dunamu (6.55%, 1.0033 trillion won, about $733 million) and Mirae Asset Consulting’s stake in Korbit (97.15%, 141.4 billion won, about $103 million) point to securing infrastructure for combined STO, RWA, and stablecoin services, not fee income alone.

Overseas tokenization pilots take six months to a year, while domestic financial institutions close their budgets in early December. Implementation should start now, not wait for the detailed rules.

1. A Fragmenting Global Crypto Market and Korea’s Position

The crypto ecosystem appears borderless on the surface, but in practice national borders are becoming sharper as each country establishes its own regulatory framework.

The EU has implemented MiCA, the United States is advancing the GENIUS Act and the CLARITY Act, and in Asia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan have each settled on their own regulatory approaches. Major economies are embracing the market through clear policy, but because those policies diverge, the global market is fragmenting along regional lines.

Korea is building its own environment within this trend. Investment demand and public interest in Korea are very high, but the country’s regulatory pace lags somewhat behind that of major economies.

2. Where Korea’s Crypto Market Stands Today

In the first half of 2026, Korea’s regulatory environment raised expectations of full incorporation into the formal financial system, including passage of the STO-related bill, but a series of market-restraining statements, including discussion of taxation, added to confusion within the ecosystem.

2.1. Bank of Korea’s Project Hangang Phase 1 Results (March 29, 2026)

The Bank of Korea released the first-phase results report for its deposit-token-based CBDC live-transaction pilot on December 18, 2025, then formally announced the start of Phase 2 on March 29, 2026.

Phase 2 goes beyond simple technical verification to test real conditional fund disbursement, including electric vehicle subsidies and official expense accounts. The number of participating banks has expanded to nine, and the pilot has added peer-to-peer transfers, biometric authentication, and automatic deposit conversion. Live transactions are expected to begin as early as September, though no separate testing period has been set. The absence of a fixed end date reflects an effort to sustain the service on an ongoing basis rather than treat it as a one-time demonstration.

While the CBDC has advanced substantially through Project Hangang, a won-denominated stablecoin remains far from realization.

While Project Hangang has moved forward, Phase 2 of the Digital Asset Basic Act, which would institutionalize a won-denominated stablecoin, has been delayed by roughly a year. The delay stems from disagreement between the Bank of Korea and the Financial Services Commission. The Bank of Korea has argued that a bank consortium should hold a stake of at least 51 percent, while the Financial Services Commission has opposed that requirement on the grounds that it would stifle innovation.

Various policy alternatives were subsequently proposed, but legislative discussion came to a complete halt in the aftermath of the June local elections, and the process has remained stalled without clear progress since. The government and the Financial Services Commission announced plans in July to resume work in the second half of the year and pass legislation before year-end, but the process has been delayed again after Rep. Park Min-gyu of the Democratic Party, a member of the National Assembly’s Political Affairs Committee, signaled that the task force would be reorganized after the party’s August convention, with the bill to be introduced in September.

The Bank of Korea-led CBDC has already entered the live-transaction verification stage and is producing visible results, while a won-denominated stablecoin remains in an uncertain state without even a legislative basis. Premature optimism about this area should therefore be treated with caution, and it should be recognized as a long-term undertaking that will require considerable time before the market settles.

2.2. Passage of the STO-Related Bill in the National Assembly (January 15, 2026)

On January 15, 2026, revisions to the Act on Electronic Registration of Stocks, Bonds, etc. (the Electronic Securities Act) and the Financial Investment Services and Capital Markets Act (the Capital Markets Act) passed a plenary session of the National Assembly. This brought to an end the three-year regulatory sandbox regime that had been in place since the Financial Services Commission released its “Plan to Reorganize the Regulatory Framework for Issuance and Distribution of Security Tokens” in February 2023.

The revision rests on three pillars: recognizing the legal status of the distributed ledger, introducing the issuer account management institution system, and detailing a distribution roadmap for investment contract securities.

Legal recognition of the distributed ledger: extends the legally valid forms of securities registration, previously limited to physical certificates and electronic securities, to include blockchain-based distributed ledgers.

Introduction of the issuer account management institution system: gives issuers that meet the qualification requirements the authority to register and manage securities directly with the Korea Securities Depository, without going through a financial institution as intermediary.

A more concrete distribution roadmap for investment contract securities: establishes a legal basis for securities firms to broker trading, improving the secondary trading environment and market liquidity for fractional-investment assets that had previously been fragmented.

The revised law was promulgated on February 3, 2026, and will take full effect on February 4, 2027, following a one-year grace period. It is still too early to expect immediate market activation from the legislative basis alone, because key practical requirements, including the specific scope of permitted assets, have been delegated to presidential decree and supervisory regulations, and detailed guidelines have not yet been announced.

The public-private Token Securities Council, launched on March 4, 2026, to work out those guidelines, is discussing the detailed plan. The Financial Services Commission originally planned to publish the subordinate regulations and guidelines around July 2026, but the timeline slipped when the process remained at a closed-door consultation stage with the legal and financial sectors as of July 31. As of late August, working-level officials expect the announcement sometime between September and November.

One encouraging aspect of the council’s discussions is the inclusion of standardized securities such as stocks. At the second meeting, held on May 15, the council reached consensus on a phased roadmap that includes tokenizing existing standardized securities such as stocks, bonds, and money market funds, and building on-chain settlement infrastructure. This suggests that the market, previously confined to fractional investment, could expand.

Rather than concentrating on sourcing new assets, as existing fractional-investment operators have done, building a model to distribute on-chain the standardized securities whose demand has already been proven could create a larger market opportunity. Domestic institutions should therefore study concrete precedents closely and build diverse global partnerships early, moving quickly enough to be well positioned once the market matures in earnest.

2.3. Amended Special Financial Information Act Takes Effect (August 20, 2026)

The amended Act on Reporting and Using Specified Financial Transaction Information, commonly known as the Special Financial Information Act (Act No. 21358), was promulgated on February 19, 2026, and took effect on August 20, 2026. Not all of its provisions apply as of that date. Stricter screening for virtual asset service provider (VASP) registration took effect on August 20, while strengthened Travel Rule requirements and rules governing transactions with overseas providers and personal wallets will apply around February 2027, six months after the enforcement decree is promulgated.

Stricter VASP registration screening: introduces review of major shareholders and raises financial soundness and creditworthiness requirements, raising the barrier to entry (effective August 20)

Strengthened Travel Rule: removes the 1 million won (about $730) threshold that had triggered the information-sharing requirement and extends it to all transactions (effective around February 2027)

Stricter rules for overseas providers and personal wallets: differentiates permitted transaction scope by risk level (effective around February 2027)

The core change to VASP registration screening is an expanded definition of major shareholder. The review now closely examines the financial soundness and creditworthiness of the largest shareholder, any shareholder who has appointed a majority of the CEO and directors, and, where the shareholder is itself a corporation, that corporation’s largest shareholder and representative.

The strengthened Travel Rule targets transaction splitting used to avoid reporting. For transfers between reported VASPs, the information-sharing threshold expands from 1 million won or more to all transactions, and the obligation to obtain that information now also falls on the receiving provider.

Overseas transactions are also being brought out of the regulatory blind spot. Rather than an outright ban, the rule applies three tiers of risk-based restriction. Transfers to low-risk overseas exchanges are permitted without a same-name requirement for sender and recipient. Transfers to other overseas exchanges and personal wallets are permitted only when the sender and recipient are the same person, meaning the wallet must be held in the user’s own name. Transactions with high-risk overseas exchanges are banned entirely. For overseas exchange and personal wallet transactions of 10 million won (about $7,300) or more, reported VASPs must build and operate their own suspicious transaction monitoring system.

2.4. No Additional Deferral for Virtual Asset Taxation (August 3, 2026)

Virtual asset taxation, whose effective date was set at January 1, 2027, through a December 2024 amendment to the Income Tax Act, will proceed as scheduled under current law after the government’s August 2026 tax reform proposal excluded any additional deferral provision. Bills from the People Power Party seeking deferral or repeal remain pending, however.

In addition, a petition submitted through the National Assembly’s public petition system points to inadequate tax infrastructure, capital outflows overseas, and declining corporate tax revenue from weaker exchange earnings, but the National Assembly and the government remain divided in their response.