South Korea’s Financial Services Commission published a three-stage roadmap on Friday for bringing stocks, bonds and funds onto blockchain infrastructure, beginning on 4 February 2027 when amendments to the Act on Electronic Registration of Stocks and Bonds take effect.
The plan was released after the third meeting of a public-private consultative body on tokenized securities, held at the Korea Securities Depository in Seoul. From February, tokenized securities will be legally recognised as digitised forms of securities under the country’s first tokenized securities framework, implemented through amendments to the Capital Markets Act and the Electronic Securities Act.
Subordinate rules and the full roadmap go to public consultation by the end of September.
The most consequential provision is not in the phasing. It is that existing licensed financial firms will be able to handle tokenized securities under approvals they already hold.
No new licence required
That decision removes the barrier that has slowed tokenized securities in most jurisdictions.
Brokers and securities firms will not need to apply for separate authorisation to serve on-chain products. They will, however, need to build distributed ledgers and connect them to the Korea Securities Depository.
Issuers choosing to manage their own securities accounts face a higher bar: at least $3 million in equity capital, plus specified IT and cybersecurity standards.
The regulator’s approach effectively treats tokenization as a change in record-keeping technology rather than as a new financial activity requiring its own licensing regime. That framing lowers the cost of participation considerably for institutions already inside the perimeter.
What phase one actually covers
The FSC has deliberately kept the first wave narrow to limit build cost and operational risk.
From February 2027, four categories become eligible. Privately placed money-market funds and privately placed corporate bonds, both restricted to institutional investors. Unlisted equities. And publicly offered fractional investment securities, the small-lot products Korea has already permitted in limited form.
Unlisted shares follow a different mechanism from the rest. Rather than issuing the shares themselves as tokens, they will be tokenized through a trust, with the underlying shares remaining on the existing system while investors receive a tokenized trust-beneficiary security.
That structure is worth noting because it is the same compromise several markets have reached. It delivers on-chain transferability without requiring the underlying registry to move, which reduces legal complexity but means the token represents a claim on a share rather than the share itself.
Phase two would expand the infrastructure to all publicly offered securities, conditional on the first stage proving stable.
Phase three depends on legislation that does not exist yet
The final stage targets on-chain settlement, allowing investors to settle tokenized trades using stablecoins.
This is where the roadmap becomes conditional. Stablecoin settlement hinges on the Digital Asset Basic Act, which remains in draft, and the FSC and the Bank of Korea have publicly differed over how won-denominated stablecoins should be governed.
Koscom, the Korea Exchange subsidiary, is nonetheless preparing a stablecoin settlement proof-of-concept targeting go-live ahead of February 2027, which suggests parts of the industry are building for phase three well before its legal foundation is settled.
The FSC has framed later phases as dependent on initial results and pending legislation. Investors should read the February date as firm and the stablecoin component as aspirational.
Institutions are already building
What separates this from a typical regulatory announcement is that the infrastructure work has been under way for months.
Koscom is standing up KoSTO, a shared issuance platform that has already signed 12 securities firms. Hyundai Motor Securities joined on 1 September.
Shinhan Asset Management, which manages roughly $96 billion, has signed a four-party memorandum of understanding with the Solana Foundation, Etherfuse and Orca to build a won-denominated tokenized short-term bond fund for offshore institutions, modelled explicitly on BlackRock’s BUIDL product.
Ripple set an earlier precedent, completing Korea’s first tokenized government bond settlement in partnership with Kyobo Life.
Korea has also been testing tokenized settlement outside securities issuance. The Ministry of Economy and Finance announced a pilot in April using tokenized deposits to execute government operational spending, with full rollout planned for the fourth quarter of 2026.
Where this sits internationally
The roadmap arrives during a period of sustained activity in Korea’s financial sector.
Hana Financial Group took a 6.55% stake in Dunamu, operator of the exchange Upbit, for roughly $668 million, building an alliance covering won stablecoins, blockchain remittances and tokenized securities. Shinhan Financial has separately joined Visa’s stablecoin platform to test issuance and business-to-business settlement.
Against that, the tokenized securities roadmap is the piece that gives the rest a legal foundation. A won stablecoin without tokenized assets to settle has limited use; tokenized assets without a settlement layer have limited utility.
Internationally, Korea’s model differs from the approaches taken elsewhere. Coinbase’s tokenized stocks on Base are backed one-to-one by shares held in a regulated trust with redemption rights. Robinhood Chain’s are derivative contracts conveying price exposure without ownership. Binance routes users into conventional US brokerage with physical share settlement and no blockchain at all.
Korea is doing something closer to the first: keeping the security inside the existing legal framework and using tokenization as the transfer mechanism, with the state’s central securities depository at the centre rather than a private issuer.
Whether that produces a functioning market depends on execution over the next 17 months. The February date is fixed. Everything after it is conditional.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Cryptocurrency investments carry significant risk. Always conduct your own research before making any investment decisions.
