South Korea’s Financial Services Commission has published a three-stage roadmap to put stocks, bonds, and funds on-chain under the country’s amended securities law. The law takes effect 4 February 2027. That is the Friday 4 September 2026 stamp, with the Feb 4, 2027 go-live also stamped on the FSC’s English press track and Friday’s Korea Times policy write-up.
Tokenized securities issuers will not need new licenses. Existing brokers and securities firms can serve on-chain products under approvals they already hold.
Three-stage map
Phase 1 launches at law go-live in February 2027. It covers institutional private money market funds (MMFs), private bonds, unlisted stocks digitized through a trust or beneficiary-certificate structure, and publicly offered small-lot fractional investment securities. Brokers must build distributed ledgers and connect them to the Korea Securities Depository (KSD). The first wave is deliberately narrow to limit build cost and operational risk.
Phase 2 expands the scope to publicly offered securities. No date is fixed. The FSC will assess Phase 1 stability, private-sector tech readiness, and progress on stablecoin regulation before moving forward.
Phase 3 is on-chain delivery-versus-payment using stablecoins — trade and cash legs on the same ledger. That end-state stays blocked until Korea’s Digital Asset Basic Act is in place. The wire notes the FSC and Bank of Korea remain at odds over won-stablecoin governance, while banking-sector work continues through Project Hangang.
The legal backbone is already done. On 15 January 2026, Korea’s National Assembly amended the Electronic Securities Act and the Capital Markets Act. Subordinate rules and the full roadmap go to public consultation by end-September 2026.
Who is already building
This is not a blank-sheet pilot. Koscom, the Korea Exchange subsidiary, is standing up KoSTO, a shared issuance platform already signed by 12 securities firms. Hyundai Motor Securities joined on 1 September. Koscom is also preparing a stablecoin settlement proof-of-concept aiming ahead of February 2027.
Shinhan Asset Management (~$96 billion AUM) has signed a four-party MoU with Solana Foundation, Etherfuse, and Orca for a KRW tokenized short-term bond fund aimed at offshore institutions, modeled on BlackRock’s BUIDL.
Securities, not crypto
Korea’s Finance Ministry has confirmed tokenized securities are securities, not crypto assets. That puts them under capital markets law, not the 22% crypto tax that begins January 2027 — a compliance distinction for pensions, insurers, and foreign funds.
Informational only. Not trading advice, signals, or a guarantee of any market outcome.
Written and fact-checked with AI assistance, reviewed by a human editor before publication.
