Korea Sets a 4 Billion Won Floor for Tokenized Securities Issuers

South Korea's Financial Services Commission has put numbers on its tokenization plan. Draft amendments published at the start of October would let stocks, bonds and funds be issued and circulated as tokens on a distributed ledger, and they set a price of entry: 4 billion won in equity capital for any issuer that also manages its customers' securities accounts. Four designated staff are required alongside it. Comments are open until 11 November, and the rules take effect on 4 February 2027.

Two dates for one notice

The accounts do not agree on when the FSC published. Crowdfund Insider and Blockonomi both say 1 October. Cointelegraph and coin-turk date the proposal to 2 October. Neither pair cites the other, and we could not establish which is right. The comment window is the one date all six accounts read here give identically: 2 October to 11 November 2026. The February start is not new. It is the day the amended securities statute takes effect, which this desk reported when the commission laid out a three-stage plan with only stage one dated on 4 September.

What the capital floor covers

The 4 billion won applies to issuers holding customer securities accounts directly, not to every firm touching a tokenized instrument. Staffing is specified rather than left to judgment: one account-management professional, one internal-control professional and two in IT. Converting the capital figure is where the write-ups drift. Cointelegraph, coin-turk and Blockonomi all give $2.8 million; the Crypto Times gives about $2.9 million. The won figure is the one all of them share, so it is the one that belongs in the rule.

The amendments would allow "traditional securities, including stocks, bonds, and funds, to be issued and circulated in tokenized form," in the language the Crypto Times carried on Saturday.

One ledger, three parties

A ledger here cannot be run alone. The draft requires it to be shared by at least two account-management entities together with the Korea Securities Depository, which puts a central institution inside every arrangement. Operators are also barred from charging users directly for ledger access. Crowdfund Insider reads that ban as protecting the reliability of confirming who owns what; Blockonomi reads it as regulators treating the ledgers as public infrastructure. Both are readings of one clause, and the clause says only that the fees are prohibited.

The retail cap and what it bites

Individual investors face an annual net purchase limit of 100 million won on each over-the-counter exchange, netting sales against purchases across the year. Cointelegraph and coin-turk both put that at about $70,000, and Cointelegraph attaches it to a new OTC licence for debt securities. Crowdfund Insider alone adds a tighter suggested limit on fractional products, the lower of 30 million won or 5% of an issue. That figure appears in no other account read here and stands unverified.

Where the window leads

Stage one is narrow by design: privately pooled money market funds, bonds for institutional buyers, unlisted shares held through a trust, and publicly offered fractional securities. Broader public offerings come later, and on-chain settlement against stablecoins later still. Neither carries a date. Korean institutions have already settled tokenized debt abroad, and Hana Bank cleared a $100 million digital bond on Euroclear's ledger in September. What the comment period decides is whether the caps and the capital floor reach February in the form published. Nothing read here says how many Korean firms clear 4 billion won today, or whether any have applied for the new licence.