Bank of Korea governor backs early won stablecoin regime on July 9

The Bank of Korea has reaffirmed its view that won-denominated stablecoins should initially be issued through bank-led consortiums, reinforcing a policy stance that has become a central fault line in South Korea’s digital asset legislation. Materials submitted to the National Assembly’s finance committee said legislation should prioritize bank-led issuance and create a statutory policy body involving relevant agencies, building on the central bank’s earlier call for banks to retain controlling stakes in issuers. The latest comments come as debate over the Digital Asset Basic Act remains unresolved, with stablecoin issuer eligibility one of the main sticking points. Lawmakers are also weighing how stablecoins, tokenized real-world assets and other digital assets should fit within South Korea’s financial rulebook. In April, the ruling Democratic Party proposed placing stablecoins and RWAs under existing financial laws, but the question of whether issuers must be bank-led has remained unsettled. The Bank of Korea also said it will continue developing deposit-token use cases in the second half of the year, including government subsidy payments, vouchers, electric vehicle charging infrastructure and other public-facing transactions. Deposit tokens represent commercial bank deposits in digital form. In April, Governor Hyun-Song Shin backed deposit tokens and central bank digital currencies in his first public address, while the Ministry of Economy and Finance announced a pilot using tokenized deposits for government operational spending. A government target presented to President Lee Jae-myung in January had aimed for the bill by the first quarter of 2026, but that timetable has slipped amid the US-Israeli war with Iran that began in late February, local elections and delays in reorganizing the Assembly’s committee structure.