Korea's token securities market will open in February with cash still moving through bank accounts

Korea's Digital Asset Basic Act was introduced in June last year ^[3], one month before Washington enacted the GENIUS Act in July ^[11][1]. The American law has its own deadline. It takes effect on January 18 next year, or earlier if 120 days pass after regulators publish final rules ^[10], so the longest possible wait from enactment to force is about 18 months ^[3]. A US payment-stablecoin regime will therefore be live before Korea's token securities market opens in February ^[2], while the Korean bill still waits for a committee hearing date ^[2].

The industry's argument for putting cash on the same ledger as the securities goes beyond cost. Trading and settlement that work across time zones are expected to widen the pool of overseas buyers and improve Korea's chances of drawing money from the global real-world asset market, where government bonds, corporate bonds and real estate are tokenized ^[18]. The report does not put a figure on what conversion and remittance cost foreign buyers today, or on how much RWA capital Korea might win.

If the committee settles on one of the supervision models already proposed and schedules hearings ^[4], the FSC's three-stage plan gets a law to run against ^[5]. If it does not, the market opens on conventional accounts, and a foreign buyer of a tokenized Korean bond converts and remits through banks whatever wallet the money started in ^[6]. A third path runs through the regulator. The SEC opened room for tokenized stock trading under existing law two days after a procedural vote on the CLARITY Act failed in the Senate ^[13][12]. Korea's regulator has tied its own later stages to the stablecoin bill ^[5].

I think the second path is the one February gets. The committee has gone since June last year without agreeing who supervises issuers ^[3]. The industry wants a second reform on top of the bill. A financial investment industry official said, according to Seoul Economic Daily, that stablecoin legislation should proceed alongside an overhaul of foreign exchange and remittance rules ^[17]. This view is wrong if the committee sets a hearing date and picks a supervision model before February, or if overseas money arrives at launch despite bank-account settlement.

Meanwhile the brokerages that will run the market are holding back. Legal liability is one reason securities firms have avoided more aggressive moves ^[14]. Industry officials want either a cap on liability for computing failures beyond a firm's control or joint guarantee insurance ^[15]. An executive in charge of token securities at a major brokerage said clear published guidelines, a roadmap for the second-stage public offering framework and interoperability standards are urgently needed to deliver stable services from February ^[16].