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South Korea to pilot tokenized government bonds tied to CBDC in 2027
The 2026 Economic Growth Strategy sets a 2027 timeline for testing whether the Bank of Korea’s wholesale CBDC can support capital markets infrastructure, not just payments.
South Korea plans to conduct a 2027 pilot that links tokenized government bonds to the Bank of Korea’s wholesale central bank digital currency system, as token securities rules come into force, Cointelegraph reports. The plan is included in the country’s 2026 Economic Growth Strategy for the second half.
According to the strategy, authorities will study how to make the Bank of Korea’s CBDC infrastructure interoperable with other blockchains, potentially allowing external distributed ledgers to connect with the bank’s permissioned setup. The project is intended to test whether wholesale CBDC designed for financial institutions can be used for capital markets infrastructure rather than only functioning as a digital payment instrument.
Cointelegraph reports the document does not specify which bonds would be included, the pilot size, participant institutions, or which blockchain technologies would be used. It also does not detail whether the trial would cover initial issuance, secondary-market trading, or only post-trade settlement.
The idea was first outlined publicly on July 1 by Bank of Korea Governor Hyun Song Shin at a panel during the European Central Bank Forum on Central Banking, Cointelegraph says. The strategy frames the bond pilot as part of a broader effort to promote a “blockchain economy,” with additional measures planned in the second half of 2026 to support large-scale demonstrations across the digital asset and blockchain ecosystem.