South Korea's retail cap is $70,000 a year, and it resets at every venue

South Korea's Financial Services Commission has published the detailed rules for issuing and trading tokenized securities, with the framework due to start on 4 February 2027. Stocks, bonds, funds and certain fractional investment securities would all be issuable in tokenized form.

The calendar, from proposal to law

• Public consultation runs from Friday to 11 November, which is 40 days
• Approval and implementation then have 85 days before the start date
• From today to 4 February 2027 is 125 days in total
• The three-phase roadmap this builds on landed on 4 September, 153 days before the rules take effect
• Issuers that manage customer accounts directly need 4 billion won of equity capital, about $2.8m, plus dedicated compliance and technology staff

Both won figures imply the same rate, 1,429 to the dollar, so the two numbers come from one conversion rather than two.

The cap attaches to the venue

Read the last four words of the retail rule: on each OTC exchange. The separate capital-markets revisions create an extra over-the-counter licence for debt securities and limit retail investors to 100 million won of annual net purchases, about $70,000, per venue. Someone registered at two licensed venues has $140,000 of annual headroom, at three, $210,000, and the regulator sees each tranche inside its own venue. Korean exchanges already report to the FSC, so aggregation is technically available. The proposal as published does not use it.

Korean retail is large enough for that to matter. We counted it in August: South Korean XRP volume on Upbit alone dwarfed bitcoin and ether turnover on the same venue.

One provision runs the other way and deserves more attention than the capital bar. Issuers would have to share access to their distributed ledgers with the Korea Securities Depository and at least two designated account management organisations, and they could not charge direct fees for use of the ledger. A private chain that three outside parties can read, and that its operator cannot monetise, is a narrow thing to build.

“To pave the way for the implementation of the tokenization of securities issuance and circulation from February 4, 2027.”

— Financial Services Commission, Из пояснения к проекту

Where this sits among the other rulebooks

The UK opened a 151-day application window this week, with its own record showing 68 registrations out of 391 completed cases. Cyprus shut its MiCA window in February and now admits nobody without a CySEC licence. Korea is doing the opposite of a window: this proposal carries a start date and a consultation that ends in November, with no application deadline, so a firm's question is about the capital and staffing bar, and timing stops being the obstacle.

The regulators are also converging on the same questions. Three authorities gave their positions on who may mint a tokenized share last month, and Seoul has now answered the same question with a capital figure and a ledger-access rule.

That $2.8m threshold is the part worth watching through consultation. It applies to issuers holding customer accounts, the group that already includes the securities firms doing this work on paper. Set it low and the licence becomes a formality for incumbents. Leave it where it is and the forty days to 11 November decide who else can afford to show up.

Informational material, not investment advice. The rules are a proposal in consultation and may change before February 2027.