South Korea's Financial Services Commission (FSC) has introduced a three-phase roadmap to build the infrastructure needed for issuing tokenized securities, covering assets such as stocks, bonds and funds.

According to a Friday press release, tokenized securities will be legally recognized as digitized forms of securities beginning Feb. 4, 2027, when an update to the Act on Electronic Registration of Stocks and Bonds is scheduled to take effect (FSC press release).

The first phase will grant tokenized securities legal recognition, including for institutional money market funds, bonds, unlisted stocks and fractional investment securities. The second phase would extend tokenization to all publicly offered securities, while the third phase targets onchain payments linked to stablecoins. The phased approach means institutional products and less liquid assets would gain legal standing first, before tokenization reaches the broader public securities market and eventually payment applications.

The roadmap forms part of the planned implementation of the amended Capital Markets Act and Electronic Securities Act — the country's first tokenized securities framework — which is scheduled to take full effect on Feb. 4 (FSC announcement). The framework places tokenized securities under the same capital markets rules that apply to conventional securities, rather than creating a separate crypto-specific regime — an approach regulators in other major markets, including the European Union with its D pilot regime for distributed ledger technology-based market infrastructure, have also pursued.

As its next step, the FSC plans to propose revisions to the relevant subordinate regulations by the end of September and to set the timeline for the second and third phases of the roadmap. Ahead of the roadmap's launch, the FSC said it will work with the Korea Securities Depository (KSD) to develop the necessary tokenization infrastructure. The involvement of KSD, the country's central securities depository, signals that the tokenization drive is being built on top of existing market infrastructure rather than parallel systems.

South Korean regulators have been steadily advancing toward a regulatory framework for tokenized assets. In May, the FSC said it would release detailed tokenized securities rules to bring them under the country's capital markets framework in 2027 (Cointelegraph).

In April, South Korea's Ministry of Economy and Finance announced a pilot project that will use tokenized deposits to execute government operational spending, with a full rollout set for the fourth quarter of 2026 (Cointelegraph).

Related: South Korea to bring digital assets under new state asset management system