South Korea Tokenizes $450M in RWAs as Banks Test Won Stablecoin

The notable signal is composition, not size: tokenized music royalties and art sit far from the treasury and money-market instruments that dominate most RWA efforts, suggesting Korean issuers are testing consumer-facing assets with harder valuation and liquidity questions. The account penetration figure matters more than the headline total, because distribution, not issuance, has constrained RWA adoption elsewhere. Shinhan's won-fund proof of concept and the central bank's own project point to a bank-led path rather than a crypto-native one. Whether that institutional route scales beyond pilots is the open question.