South Korean Lawmakers From Both Parties Push for Digital Asset Framework Act

Lawmakers from South Korea's two major parties called on Nov. 10 for the country to move beyond its repeated delay of virtual-asset taxation and enact a full Digital Asset Framework Act, with the government set to unveil its draft bill later this month.

People Power Party floor leader Chung Jeom-sik delivered the timeline at D-CON 2026, held at the Fairmont Ambassador Seoul in Yeouido. He said the government will publish the draft framework act before the end of November, and he pledged to revise provisions that don't match market conditions once the bill lands.

"Countries around the world are already speeding up regulatory efforts to secure the upper hand," Chung said, arguing that a broad range of financial services and business models is expanding as digital assets go mainstream.

What did the ruling party propose?

Chung pressed for tax rules that reflect how the market actually behaves. Taxation that ignores the volatility of virtual-asset prices would burden both investors and companies, he said.

He told the forum he met exchange executives in September and urged them to help create realistic, reasonable tax standards. His framing splits the goal in two: investors should trade with confidence, and companies should feel free to launch new services without regulatory ambiguity.

What about the opposition's position?

Kim Sung-won, chair of the National Assembly's Trade, Industry, Energy, SMEs and Startups Committee, took the agenda further than the tax delay. He said the one thing both parties got right was postponing virtual-asset taxation — but that South Korea now needs a framework law to match its technological base.

The country has the technology and the innovative companies, Kim said, but lacks the institutional foundation. He noted he has already proposed bills covering:

• a Digital Asset Framework Act;
• permission for multiple real-name exchange accounts;
• a regulatory sandbox for virtual-asset businesses.

He pressed both parties to actively debate those measures and said politics should not stop at staging an event but must turn ideas into policy. Lawmakers, he said, will organize the forum's comments, relay them to the government and keep pushing support through the National Assembly.

Democratic Party lawmaker Back Hye-ryun, who previously chaired the National Assembly's Political Affairs Committee, framed user protection and market trust as the foundation for industry growth. The Virtual Asset User Protection Act, passed during his chairmanship, still has shortcomings, he acknowledged, but it built a base for user protection.

"For innovation to flourish, the ground beneath it must be firm, and that ground is trust," Back said.

He admitted legislation has lagged behind shifts in finance — naming tokenization of real-world assets and stablecoins — and apologized for the delay. South Korea's industry will gain global competitiveness only if safe regulation and dynamic innovation are balanced, he said, promising National Assembly support for the sector's technology and entrepreneurial drive.

Park Sung-joon, also of the Democratic Party, closed by arguing South Korea should lead rather than follow. The country became an export powerhouse through a shift in thinking, new markets and technological advances, he said, and it has the technology, imagination and talent to lead the global digital-asset market.

The immediate marker for the industry is the government's draft framework bill, expected before the end of the month.