At a November 10, 2026 discussion in Seoul, South Korean officials set out how stablecoins should be treated if they are used as electronic payment instruments. The account below follows a TechFlowPost report of Yonhap News Agency coverage of that session. It is a record of officials’ statements, not enacted law and not a finding about any issuer’s reserves.
Shim Eun-seop (沈恩燮), director of the Electronic Finance Inspection Bureau at the Financial Supervisory Service, spoke at the Financial Investment Education Institute in Yeouido. He said that if stablecoins are used as an electronic means of payment, applying the Electronic Financial Transactions Act is unavoidable. He tied that view to fairness with existing electronic payment methods, user protection, and the stability of payment and settlement.
He said that putting the same payment and settlement transaction under different laws according to the payment method could produce regulatory-arbitrage confusion. He proposed a small-amount licensing regime under the Act. Obligations he listed were stability safeguards, drafting and filing of terms, protection of top-up funds and settlement funds, protection of transaction information, and dispute handling. Those items are proposed duties on a payment activity. They are not an attestation or an audit, and they do not establish that a stablecoin is guaranteed, insured, or redeemable on any particular terms.
Kim Bo-il (金保一), head of the Bank of Korea’s virtual-asset group, said it is necessary to consider how far a national payment system should rely on global private networks. He described as a compromise his earlier position that stablecoin issuance should start with banks at the center, and that who may issue should be widened only after technical verification.
The report says the government draft of the Basic Act on Digital Assets, expected to be made public in November 2026, is likely to place stablecoin issuance with bank-led consortia. That is an expectation stated in the reporting, not the text of a published bill.
Source: TechFlowPost, published November 10, 2026, at 16:43 (UTC+8), citing Yonhap News Agency.
