The Bank of Korea has begun recruiting cryptocurrency experts to simultaneously restart the digital won program and plans to launch a pilot this year

The Bank of Korea announced the recruitment of 10 new employees, some of whom require at least five years of experience in the crypto industry. They will serve as digital asset market analysts as soon as July this year, responsible for studying the impact of cryptocurrencies, stablecoins and tokenized assets on financial stability.<br /> The recruitment news coincides with the central bank's restart of the CBDC program Hanjiang Project, which was suspended last year on the grounds that pilot users reported inconvenience to use. The new round of plans has adjusted its positioning and shifted to government and corporate application scenarios: the authorities target to issue 25% government subsidies in digital won by 2030, and plan to start pilot payments in the first half of 2026. The head of the Bank of Korea's digital currency planning team said that stablecoins and CBDC are not competing, but complement each other. The above deployment is in conjunction with upcoming legislation, and South Korea will lift its long-standing ban on the issuance of cryptocurrencies and stablecoins in China.