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By Sheldon Reback, AI Boost|Edited by Oliver Knight
Updated Aug 22, 2025, 9:34 a.m. Published Aug 22, 2025, 9:34 a.m.
- South Korea’s major financial groups are set to meet with Tether and Circle to discuss stablecoin partnerships.
- Executives from Shinhan, Hana, KB Financial, and Woori Bank will explore distributing dollar-pegged stablecoins and issuing a won-based stablecoin.
- The meetings align with President Lee Jae Myung’s push to establish a stablecoin market in the country.
South Korea’s largest financial groups are set to meet officials from Tether and Circle Internet (CRCL), issuers of the two largest stablecoins, as early as this week, according to Yonhap.
In separate meetings, executives from Shinhan, Hana, KB Financial and Woori Bank will discuss potential partnerships on distributing and transacting with dollar-pegged stablecoins in the country, as well as explore the issuance of a stablecoin pegged to the won.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
The moves come as President Lee Jae Myung’s pro-crypto administration pushes to establish a market for stablecoins, digital tokens whose value is pegged to a conventional asset, tied to the won, a key pledge from his election campaign. The Bank of Korea shelved plans to issue a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in June following Lee’s election earlier in the month. Upbit, one of the country’s largest crypto exchanges, has already said it’s working with Naver Pay on a stablecoin.
Shinhan CEO Jin Ok-dong and Hana CEO Ham Young-joo are scheduled to meet Circle President Heath Tarbert on Friday, and Ham is also expected to sit down with a Tether official later the same day. KB Financial’s chief digital & IT officer, Lee Chang-kwon, and Woori Bank President Jeong Jin-wan are reportedly arranging similar talks with Circle, whose USDC is the second-largest stablecoin, trailing Tether’s USDT.
Disclaimer: Parts of this article were generated with the assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk’s full AI Policy.
Sheldon Reback is CoinDesk editorial’s Regional Head of Europe. Before joining the company, he spent 26 years as an editor at Bloomberg News, where he worked on beats as diverse as stock markets and the retail industry as well as covering the dot-com bubble of 2000-2002. He managed the Bloomberg Terminal’s main news page and also worked on a global project to produce short, chart-based stories across the newsroom. He previously worked as a journalist for a number of technology magazines in Hong Kong. Sheldon has a degree in industrial chemistry and an MBA. He owns ether and bitcoin below CoinDesk’s notifiable limit.
“AI Boost” indicates a generative text tool, typically an AI chatbot, contributed to the article. In each and every case, the article was edited, fact-checked and published by a human. Read more about CoinDesk’s AI Policy.
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