What happened
A domestic policy report circulated in Seoul on Wednesday urged the government to build an interim licensing regime for stablecoin issuers instead of waiting for the Digital Asset Basic Act, the omnibus crypto law that has been stuck in the National Assembly. Crypto. News, which first surfaced the report, characterized the recommendation as a phased approach: a limited licensing window, tighter reserve and disclosure rules, and a defined migration path once the broader statute passes.
The reasoning is procedural. The Digital Asset Basic Act covers custody, exchanges, disclosures, and issuance in one bill, and each of those pillars has its own political fight. Stablecoins, by contrast, are narrower and easier to ring-fence.
Seoul's policy researchers argue that carving them out lets regulators supervise a fast-growing corner of the market without holding it hostage to the full legislative cycle.
Why it matters
South Korea has one of the deepest retail crypto markets in Asia and one of the slowest legislative processes for regulating it. That gap has cost the country ground. Hong Kong opened a stablecoin licensing regime in 2025, Japan cleared a bank-issued stablecoin framework earlier, and Singapore has been onboarding issuers for two years.
Seoul now risks watching won-denominated settlement rails get built somewhere else. An interim license fixes the political timing problem. Regulators can start supervising reserves, redemption, and disclosure without waiting for the full bill.
Issuers get a legal path, not a gray zone. And the government keeps the option to tighten the rules once the Digital Asset Basic Act arrives. The unspoken risk is a two-tier system where early licensees hold an incumbency advantage the final law struggles to unwind.