SEOUL, April 07 (AJP) -South Korea and France’s central banks discussed stablecoins and the evolving role of banks in a tokenized financial system during a joint session in Seoul, the Bank of Korea said Tuesday.
The Bank of Korea (BOK) and the Banque de France (BdF) are holding a two-day meeting from Tuesday through Wednesday as part of a regular academic exchange launched in 2024 to address shifts in the global economic landscape.
This year’s session coincided with French President Emmanuel Macron’s state visit and a summit with President Lee Jae Myung, where the two leaders agreed to deepen cooperation in economic and security sectors last Friday.
Talks focused on the implications of stablecoins and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) for the international monetary system, as well as the changing roles of central and commercial banks in a tokenized environment.
The Banque de France has been among Europe’s most active advocates of CBDCs, leading pilot programs on wholesale CBDCs (wCBDCs) to enhance cross-border payments and test their use as settlement assets for tokenized securities. These efforts are seen as helping shape the European Central Bank’s digital euro project.
The BOK has also been advancing its own CBDC framework under “Project Han River,” launched in 2023, with real-transaction testing now entering a second phase last month. The latest discussions are expected to deepen policy coordination between the two sides.
The session also examined how climate change is feeding into inflation dynamics and posing broader macroeconomic challenges for financial institutions.
Participants include BOK Deputy Governor and Chief Economist Lee Jae-won and Na Seung-ho, deputy director general at its Economic Research Institute. The French delegation is led by Deputy Governor Agnès Bénassy-Quéré and Stéphane Latouche, the bank’s Asia-Pacific chief representative.
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