When a central bank governor gives their first speech in office, every word is chosen carefully. What they say matters. What they leave out matters more. On Tuesday, Bank of Korea Governor Shin Hyun-song delivered his inauguration address in Seoul. He talked about central bank digital currencies. He talked about bank-issued deposit tokens. He talked about cross-border tokenisation projects and 24-hour foreign exchange trading. He did not say the word “stablecoin” once.
In a country where lawmakers are actively debating stablecoin regulation, where major banks are preparing to issue won-pegged tokens, and where the first regulated Korean stablecoin launched just two months ago, that silence was deafening.
What He Did Say
Shin prioritised a CBDC and bank-issued deposit tokens in his key address, centering them in Korea’s digital money strategy. He pointed to the bank’s ongoing retail CBDC and deposit-token pilot, Project Hangang, and its role in Project Agora, a cross-border tokenisation effort led by the Bank for International Settlements.
In practical terms, Shin wants a system where the Bank of Korea issues a wholesale digital won, and commercial banks create tokenised deposits that are fully convertible into it. Regular people would use the bank tokens for everyday payments. The central bank would control the monetary infrastructure underneath. Everything stays inside the existing banking system.
His speech also outlined a bank-led model where the central bank would issue a CBDC, while commercial banks would provide deposit tokens fully convertible into it. Shin has argued that any stablecoin issuance should begin with regulated banks.
He also announced that the central bank would expand monitoring of cryptocurrencies and other nontraditional assets. So not only did he skip stablecoins from the digital money plan, he signalled that the BOK would be watching crypto markets more closely going forward.
Why the Silence on Stablecoins Is Significant
South Korea is not some small market. It has one of the most active crypto trading populations in the world. Korean exchanges like Upbit and Bithumb regularly rank among the top five globally by volume. The country’s proposed Digital Asset Basic Act would establish comprehensive rules for stablecoin issuance, and major financial players have been gearing up for it.
The absence of stablecoins from his speech was notable because lawmakers in South Korea have been working on a legal framework for local stablecoins under the proposed Digital Asset Basic Act. Major local financial firms have been expanding their businesses to cover stablecoins and digital asset-based payments, in anticipation of the upcoming law.
KRW1, South Korea’s first fully regulated won-pegged stablecoin, launched in February through a partnership between crypto custodian BDACS and Woori Bank. The market was moving toward stablecoins. The new governor just moved the central bank away from them.
The Man Behind the Decision
Shin is not coming to this cold. Before becoming BOK governor, he spent over a decade at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, including serving as head of the Monetary and Economic Department. The BIS is essentially the central bank for central banks, and it has been consistently sceptical of private stablecoins.
Last month, he published research arguing that stablecoins fail to satisfy “unity,” a core property of money, due to fragmentation across blockchain networks with varying fees, security levels, and decentralisation structures.
His academic work essentially argues that having USDT on Ethereum, USDC on Solana, and a won stablecoin on some other chain creates a fragmented payment system where money does not work the same everywhere. A CBDC, by contrast, is one currency on one system controlled by one authority. For a central banker, the appeal is obvious.
Shin does not reject stablecoins outright, but he clearly places them behind CBDC and deposit tokens. He says a won-based stablecoin could be introduced, yet trust in the currency and strong compliance must come first.
During his confirmation hearings, he had actually sounded more open, saying stablecoins could “coexist complementarily and competitively” with deposit tokens. The fact that he walked that back in his inauguration speech suggests the central bank is drawing a clearer line than lawmakers expected.
What This Means for Crypto
For stablecoin issuers like Tether and Circle, South Korea just got harder. If the BOK pushes a CBDC-first model, private stablecoins will be treated as secondary players at best. Any won-denominated stablecoin would need to compete with a government-backed digital currency that has the full weight of the central bank behind it. That is a tough fight to win.
For the broader crypto market in Korea, the message is mixed. Shin is not anti-crypto. He supports blockchain-based finance and wants Korea to be part of global tokenisation projects. But he wants that innovation to happen inside the banking system, not outside it. That is good news for Korean banks experimenting with deposit tokens. It is less good news for DeFi protocols and decentralised stablecoin projects that operate outside the traditional financial system.
The central bank had reportedly paused parts of its CBDC work last June as interest in won-based stablecoins grew. Under Shin, that balance now appears to be shifting again.
The pendulum swung toward stablecoins in 2025. It is swinging back toward CBDCs in 2026. For anyone building in the Korean crypto market, the governor’s first speech just told you which way the wind is blowing. Whether it stays that way depends on how the Digital Asset Basic Act debate plays out after the June 3 regional elections. But for now, the central bank has spoken, and stablecoins were not part of the sentence.
