South Korea to pilot tokenized government bonds in 2027

The 2026 Economic Growth Strategy for the Second Half includes a plan for a 2027 pilot linking tokenized government bonds to the Bank of Korea’s institutional CBDC infrastructure. The pilot will test whether the wholesale CBDC, intended for use by financial institutions, can support capital markets functions as well as payments.

The strategy sets 2027 for the pilot and directs authorities to study how to make the Bank of Korea’s CBDC system interoperable with other blockchains. Officials will explore connections between external distributed ledgers and the central bank’s permissioned CBDC network to allow tokenized securities to interact with multiple ledger technologies.

The document did not name which government bonds will be included, the trial’s scale, participating institutions, or the blockchain platforms that will be used. It also did not specify whether the pilot will include initial issuance, secondary trading, or only post-trade settlement.

Bank of Korea Governor Hyun Song Shin has called government bonds the ‘big prize’ for tokenization and proposed bringing tokenized bonds, wholesale central bank money and tokenized commercial bank deposits onto a single ledger as an extension of Project Hangang.

The pilot forms part of a broader plan to promote a ‘blockchain economy.’ Authorities plan measures in the second half of 2026 to support large-scale demonstrations and technology development across the digital-asset and blockchain sectors. Amendments recognizing distributed ledgers as valid securities registries are scheduled to take effect in February 2027, allowing regulated issuance and circulation of tokenized stocks, bonds and money-market instruments.

The Bank of Korea has highlighted risks that require study before wider deployment. Research presented at a central banking forum warned that faster continuous settlement could transmit market stress more quickly and create vulnerabilities linked to smart contracts, liquidity management and reliance on data oracles. The BOK also noted that Project Hangang’s digital ledger and the central bank’s current payment system do not yet operate in real time with each other.

The strategy also calls for legislation covering business operations and stablecoins. Officials expect the pilot to clarify how wholesale CBDC and tokenized securities might function together and to inform rules for a regulated token securities market.

The 2027 pilot moves tokenized sovereign debt from proposal into a government timetable and will test technical, legal and market aspects of integrating central-bank issued digital money into capital markets infrastructure.