Korean stocks could soon reach U.S. investors as tokens. Kakaopay Securities, the brokerage arm of the Korean fintech giant, has partnered with tokenization firm Dinari to test whether Korean-listed shares can be tokenized and distributed to eligible investors outside South Korea, including through channels in the United States.
Announced on Sept. 29, the partnership will develop a framework for sourcing underlying Korean equities, conduct a proof of concept for tokenization, and establish a joint task force later in 2026 to study the operational, technical, and regulatory requirements for international distribution. No Korean stock has been tokenized under the partnership yet, and neither company identified which equities could enter the proof of concept or gave a date for international trading.
The companies plan to examine Dinari’s dShares model, under which each token is backed one-to-one by a corresponding underlying security held through a custodial structure. Dinari says the model is designed to preserve the applicable rights tied to the shares, including dividends and voting.
## Starting with a tokenization trial
The first stage centers on obtaining Korean-listed shares and testing how they could be represented through Dinari’s token infrastructure. The planned work covers both the creation of tokens against underlying shares and their redemption when investors exit positions.
Kakaopay Securities Executive Vice President Inyoung Chung said the company wants to develop a concrete framework for distributing Korean equities internationally. The process will begin with sourcing listed shares and move into a tokenization proof of concept while the partners assess technical feasibility, Chung said.
Dinari CEO Gabe Otte pointed to the access gap the partnership aims to address. Korea is home to some of the world’s most important companies, yet access remains limited for most investors abroad, he noted. Existing overseas exposure often depends on instruments such as depositary receipts, which are available for only a portion of Korean-listed companies.
The planned task force will cover token issuance and redemption, reconciliation between digital tokens and the underlying securities, shareholder rights, and the infrastructure needed to distribute the products through Dinari’s network of partners in the U.S. and other markets, all subject to regulatory and operational requirements.
## Dinari’s regulatory foundation
Dinari already uses dShares to provide blockchain-based exposure to U.S.-listed stocks and exchange-traded funds. The company’s current product set includes 724 tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs for eligible users in the United States and more than 85 jurisdictions, according to the Sept. 29 announcement.
Its U.S. regulatory structure includes Dinari Securities LLC, which an SEC filing shows was approved as an SEC-registered introducing broker-dealer on June 20, 2025, and became a FINRA member. At the end of 2025, the entity had not yet opened customer accounts. Dinari launched its U.S. tokenized-equity service in 2026, saying in August that eligible investors could access all 724 tokenized stocks and ETFs, including S&P 500 companies, through self-custody wallets funded with USDC.
A separate September integration brought those products into Bitcoin.com’s ecosystem for eligible U.S. users, using Dinari’s infrastructure.
The Kakaopay agreement would apply the same one-to-one custodial concept to securities listed in South Korea, though the companies still need to determine how Korean market rules, custody arrangements, and cross-border distribution requirements would apply. Readers should treat the announcement as a proposed distribution framework, not an approved offering of tokenized Korean stocks in the U.S.
## Korea’s own rulebook is coming
South Korea is preparing its own legal structure for tokenized securities. The country’s tokenized securities framework is scheduled to begin taking effect nationwide in February 2027, which gives the Kakaopay-Dinari task force a regulatory horizon to work toward, and a deadline of sorts for having its proof of concept ready.
The timing matters for both sides. For Kakaopay Securities, an early framework means a potential first-mover position in distributing Korean equities to global retail and institutional channels. For Dinari, Korean listings would extend a dShares catalog that so far covers only U.S. instruments, and would test whether the model survives contact with a foreign market’s custody and shareholder-rights regime.
For now, the concrete deliverables are limited to the framework, the proof of concept, and the task force. Everything else, including which stocks, which wallets, and which jurisdictions come first, remains open.
Market context as of Sept. 29, 19:45 UTC: Bitcoin trades at 83,438 USD, Ethereum at 2,689.13 USD, and Solana at 118.71 USD, per Binance spot data.
dShares being 1:1 backed with dividends and voting preserved is the only part that matters here. the rest is plumbing
proof of concept first tho. no ticker named, no start date, task force later in 2026. the announcement is a timeline made of fog
plumbing is the whole product tho. redemption rights and custody of the underlying shares is exactly where tokenized equity projects have quietly died. 1:1 backing means nothing without clean redemption
dividends and voting rights are nice on paper but cross border tax treatment on Korean equities is the thing nobody has solved yet. withholding rules will eat the yield
dividend withholding is 15% under the korea-us treaty whether you hold the token or the share through a broker. the genuinely unsolved part is reporting, the treaty rate is fine
imagine buying SK Hynix through dinari at us market hours instead of waking up at 3am for krx. that alone is the pitch
lol the 3am krx sessions build character. but real talk, liquidity on the tokenized version matters more than market hours
kakaopay securities doing this is the part people sleep on. korean retail already trades us names through that app, this is just the pipeline running in reverse
until the FSC signs off on overseas distribution this is a sandbox with a press release. the framework part is where these deals usually go quiet
the FSC has actually been warmer to security token pilots than people give it credit for. overseas distribution to us investors is the minefield, not the sandbox. domestic poc could move fast
FSC signoff is the whole ballgame, true. but kakaopay has regulatory muscle few fintechs there have, if anyone drags korean equities onchain it will be a domestic giant
everyone covered the 15% dividend withholding but nobody mentions the fx leg. korean stocks pay dividends in krw, a usd wrapped token adds a conversion spread on every payout that nobody prices in
the fx leg point is so underrated. every krw dividend converted into the wrapped token eats spread, add the 15 percent withholding and the real yield on korean blue chip tokens is way thinner than the deck claims
Dinari keeps landing these partnerships. First the US stock rails, now Korean equities through Kakaopay. If the proof of concept works this opens a market that was basically locked for foreign retail.
task force later in 2026, no equities named, no trading date. thats a lot of maybe for a headline lol. still, korea actually regulating this would be huge
a lot of maybe, sure, but dinari already runs tokenized us stock rails so the poc has real plumbing behind it. a joint task force with dates is more than most announcements give you
agree with the skepticism but sourcing the underlying shares is the hard part and they explicitly said that’s step one. most tokenization announcements skip that entirely
dShares 1:1 with dividends and voting preserved is the only tokenization model that makes sense to me. if the korean PoC works the locked market angle is real, foreign retail basically cant buy KOSPI names today