Seoul Rewrites 1950 Asset Law to Count Crypto, Because 76-Year-Olds Can Learn New Tricks 🇰🇷

South Korea is preparing to revise its National Property Act of 1950 so that virtual currencies and intellectual property are formally classified as national assets, according to the Ministry of Economy and Finance's economic policy roadmap released Wednesday. The revisions are part of a broader overhaul of how the country manages state-owned property and would create a wider legal framework covering asset classes that did not exist when the law was first enacted.

The ministry also reiterated plans to launch a 2027 pilot for tokenized government bonds, citing blockchain's potential to lower transaction costs and speed up transfers. Officials are studying the tokenization of state-owned real estate, with the stated goal of letting retail investors participate in and share the returns of those assets.

The announcement extends South Korea's ongoing integration of blockchain into public finance. Earlier this year, the Finance Ministry said it would begin testing tokenized deposits for government spending in the fourth quarter, while the Bank of Korea has already begun trials of a central bank digital currency with commercial banks. According to the roadmap, the government plans to connect tokenized government bonds to the Bank of Korea's CBDC infrastructure during the 2027 pilot and will study interoperability between the central bank's blockchain network and other distributed ledger platforms.

Legal amendments to the Capital Markets Act and the Electronic Act are scheduled to take effect on Feb. 4, 2027, giving blockchain-based ledger systems formal recognition as security registries. The plan links these changes to the ministry's broader push to align digital asset infrastructure with existing financial regulation as tokenized government bonds and any future tokenized real estate products move closer to issuance.