South Korea maps a three-stage path to tokenizing 'all types' of securities

South Korea's Financial Services Commission has published a three-stage roadmap for tokenizing securities, covering everything from stocks and bonds to funds. The plan starts once the country's securities token law takes effect in February 2027, opening with private money-market funds and corporate bonds aimed at institutional investors, plus a trust structure for tokenizing unlisted shares.

The path from private to public to settled

Stage two expands the framework to publicly offered securities once stage one is running cleanly. Stage three is the more ambitious piece: onchain settlement infrastructure that would let investors settle tokenized securities directly in stablecoins, collapsing a process that currently runs through multiple intermediaries.

The guardrails already built in

Existing brokerages can participate without seeking additional licensing, which lowers the barrier for incumbents to move first. Over-the-counter tokenized-securities platforms face a cap of 100 million won a year per retail investor, a limit clearly aimed at keeping early retail exposure contained while the institutional market matures. Regulators have pointed to BlackRock's BUIDL fund and Hong Kong's tokenized green bonds as reference models for where this is headed.