Karla Barker 
From Retail Mania to Institutional Interest
South Korea’s crypto market has long been associated with the kimchi premium, where local prices spiked above global averages because of retail speculation. That story is changing. Andrew Park, CEO of Factblock and organizer of Korea Blockchain Week, says overseas institutions now ask different questions.
A former executive at JPMorgan Chase, Visa, and American Express, Park sees a shift from token listings toward custody, tokenization, stablecoins, and regulatory entry. “The fact that the conversation itself has changed is an important signal,” he said. Global banks and asset managers now view Seoul as a jurisdiction for enterprise deployment, not just a liquid venue for retail trading.
Building Infrastructure Behind the Scenes
Park argues institutional markets are not built on major announcements. They emerge when unglamorous issues get resolved: account access, custody, payments, accounting, and compliance. In Korea, those pieces are moving together.
South Korea’s Financial Services Commission has proposed opening corporate virtual asset accounts to around 3,500 listed companies and registered professional investors. The National Assembly passed amendments to the Electronic Securities Act and the Capital Markets Act, bringing tokenized real-world assets into a unified framework. The Bank of Korea has also completed initial trials for its real-world deposit token initiative under Project Hangang.
Park also pushes back on crypto’s tendency to dismiss banks as slow. In traditional finance, the important part is not the 99% of transactions that work. It is what happens when fraud occurs, payments fail, or regulators ask for reports. That remaining 1% must be designed into the system.
AI Agents and On-Chain Payments
Traditional financiers often see only price volatility, but Park is looking further ahead. He sees the next milestone at the intersection of artificial intelligence and programmable payment rails.
“If an AI agent needs to pay another agent or a service, it needs a wallet and a payment method,” Park said. Large numbers of AI agents making small real-time payments could make existing infrastructure inefficient. Stablecoins and on-chain payments might become important use cases.
Early testing has already begun. Researchers working with the Bank of Korea have experimented with agentic AI models using wholesale deposit tokens to execute automated conditional transactions. With widespread high-speed connectivity and strong investment in Web3 and AI, South Korea is well placed for this next phase.
The country’s evolution may no longer be defined by retail premiums. It could become a testing ground for autonomous software agents transacting on blockchain rails.