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Bank of Korea Governor Hyun Song Shin has outlined a plan to extend Korea’s tokenized money pilot into government bonds, collateral management and cross-border securities settlement.
The proposal would put wholesale CBDC, tokenized bank deposits and tokenized bonds on connected settlement rails under Project Hangang, the central bank’s digital currency infrastructure program.
Bonds Would Settle DvP With CBDC
Shin presented the plan at the European Central Bank’s central banking forum in Sintra, Portugal, in a paper on the unified ledger lessons from Project Hangang. The idea is to place systemically important assets such as government bonds directly on the Bank of Korea’s Digital Currency System.
That would allow tokenized bonds and wholesale CBDC to settle together in one delivery-versus-payment transaction.
For the bond market, the change could remove manual steps from settlement and collateral checks. Smart contracts could verify whether a bond is eligible collateral, apply haircuts and update collateral pools during repo transactions or central bank lending.
Hangang Phase One Tested 80,000 Users
Project Hangang has already tested wholesale CBDC and tokenized commercial bank deposits in live retail transactions. The first phase ran from April to June 2025 with seven banks, about 80,000 users and 12,000 selected merchants.
It tested everyday payments, peer-to-peer transfers and programmable voucher use cases in a public-facing environment. That phase showed how tokenized bank deposits could be used for consumer payments while wholesale CBDC remained part of the settlement design.
July Phase Adds Government Payments
The second phase is set to start with government fund disbursement use cases from the end of July. It will expand the number of participating banks to nine and test public spending programs on tokenized rails.
One planned use case covers electric vehicle charging infrastructure subsidies. The Bank of Korea wants to test whether tokenized deposits can restrict funds to approved recipients, products and time windows before money is spent.
Agorá Link Targets Foreign Bond Settlement
Shin also linked the bond plan to cross-border settlement. The Bank of Korea is exploring how Project Hangang could connect with Project Agorá, the international settlement project led by the Bank for International Settlements and several central banks.
That link could make foreign investment in Korean Treasury bonds easier. Today, foreign exchange settlement and securities settlement run through separate processes, forcing investors and intermediaries to manage won liquidity before bond settlement.
If Korean government bonds are tokenized on the Digital Currency System and connected to cross-border tokenized money rails, foreign exchange and securities settlement could be programmed into one transaction.
BOK Keeps Central Bank Money at Core
The plan also places the Bank of Korea’s strategy against private stablecoin models. Shin has argued that private payment tokens can weaken the singleness of money, the idea that the same unit of money should keep the same value across payment systems.
Project Hangang keeps central bank money at the settlement core while allowing banks to issue tokenized deposits on top. The next tests are government disbursements, legal treatment for tokenized deposits and whether tokenized bonds can move into live market use.
