Bank of Korea

Bank of Korea says Project Hangang deposit-token live transactions for the public will start from year-end, with banks holding 7% reserves against tokens

In an official Bank of Korea blog post dated 8 October 2026, the head of its Digital Currency Planning Team wrote that the Bank and participating banks are in final preparations for follow-on live transactions with the general public under Project Hangang Phase 2, due to resume within the year, while the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment's EV charging-facility subsidy programme is already running on the system. Under the Bank of Korea's digital currency R&D rules, banks must hold 7% of the deposit tokens they issue as reserves, and deposit insurance applies; only banks can hold the wholesale digital currency, and the Bank of Korea says it has no plan to introduce or issue a retail CBDC. (Source text in Korean; summary translated.)

Bank of Korea

Bank of Korea study: USD stablecoin demand could start moving the won as Korea's digital asset market opens up

A BOK Issue Note published on 3 September 2026 finds that after Binance introduced fiat–USD stablecoin trading pairs, stablecoin premia fell and buying pressure was associated with depreciation of the paired local currencies. In Korea, where no such Binance pair is available, net buying pressure shows up mainly in higher stablecoin premia with no significant effect on the exchange rate. The authors say these linkages could strengthen as corporations and foreign investors enter Korea's digital asset market, and that digital asset regulation should be considered together with won internationalisation and deeper FX market liquidity.

Bank of Korea

Bank of Korea Governor Shin: government plans to pay a quarter of central government treasury payments through the Project Hangang platform by 2030

The Bank of Korea published on 31 July 2026 the subtitled transcript of Governor Shin Hyun Song's presentation at the ECB Forum on Central Banking 2026, "A unified ledger in practice: lessons from Project Hangang". He said the first phase was a live trial with seven commercial banks, about 80,000 users and around 12,000 merchants, that the government plans to use the platform to disburse a quarter of all central government treasury payments by 2030, starting with a subsidy fund for new EV charging stations, and that reserve requirements, deposit insurance and prudential regulation all carry over to tokenized deposits. He also said he supports the introduction of a stablecoin framework in Korea, but that tokenization is best done using central bank money.

Bank of Korea

BIS Project Agorá completes real-value testing with 28 institutions, including five Korean banks settling KRW alongside the Bank of Korea

The BIS says Project Agorá conducted real-value testing (RVT) in July 2026: 28 financial institutions and central banks completed transactions totalling about CHF 800,000 in CHF, EUR, GBP, JPY, KRW and USD, across 17 scenarios and 30 transactions using tokenised central bank reserves and tokenised commercial bank deposits. KRW transactions totalled KRW 120 million, with the Bank of Korea among five testing central banks and Hana Bank, KB Kookmin Bank, NongHyup Bank, Shinhan Bank and Woori Bank among the testing financial institutions. Average time from payment initiation to settlement was about 80 seconds even though the prototype was not integrated with RTGS and core banking systems.

Bank for International Settlements

Bank of Korea issue note: tokenized assets should settle first in central bank money and tokenized deposits, with stablecoins supplementary

BOK Issue Note 2026-11 (14 May 2026) on asset tokenization says Korea's market remains at an early stage, but amendments to the Electronic Securities Act and the Capital Markets Act in February 2026 established an institutional framework for issuing and distributing tokenized securities. It puts the global tokenization market at USD 50.37 billion as of end-March 2026 and recommends that tokenized assets settle primarily in central bank money (including CBDC) and commercial bank deposits (including tokenized deposits), with stablecoins in a supplementary role, alongside on-chain monitoring and stress tests.

Bank of Korea