The South Korean government will invest $9 million (10 billion Korean won) to support the development of blockchain projects in the country. The authorities expect to launch six pilot projects based on the distributed ledger technology for these funds.
Why it is important
- The blockchain-based projects will be created for the supply of livestock products, customs clearance, online voting, real estate transactions, and cross-border distribution of electronic documents and logistics delivery.
- According to the document, the main goal is to improve the efficiency of information exchange and transparency in these public services through the use of a distributed ledger.
According to the strategy of technological development, which was published by the Ministry of Science and ICT, funding is planned for 2018-2019. The document emphasizes that South Korea seeks a medium-term and long-term plan to expand the technology of blockchain.
At the same time, the ministry is ready to take the initiative to coordinate the launch of six blockchain startups with other departments of the country. For example, the Ministry of Science and ICT plans to cooperate with the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs in the deployment of a system that will maintain and automatically update information on livestock numbers, reproduction, product shipment and sales. Thus, the speed of information transfer from the manufacturer to suppliers and sellers will be reduced.
Each party in the supply chain that functions as a node can be informed more promptly and the observation period could be reduced from six days to less than 10 minutes in the case of a problem. A similar blockchain project can be launched in real estate with the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport of South Korea willing to oversee it.
In addition, the authorities are ready to invest $ 720,000 dollars (800 million won) per year for up to six years to expand the research center of block-technology.
Korea is actively developing the blockchain technology. Recently developers have announced that South Korea is considering a project to create a new blockchain center at Haeundae Beach in Busan in coordination with city authorities on August 30. The Korean crypto beach will be modeled after the Swiss “Crypto Valley” in Zug.
But at the same time, the authorities of the country still have a lot of doubts in relation to cryptocurrencies. Previously, the media reported that the government plans to introduce a 10% tax on profits from investments in the digital currency. However, officials of South Korea clarified that this issue has not yet been resolved. The introduction of such a tax may take several years.
Earlier, the Bank of Korea (BoK) officially stated that it is not going to launch its own cryptocurrency. The regulator made this decision because of a number of concerns about digital assets and BoK had considered the possible expediency of using a digital coins as a currency. As a result, the bank concluded that it wants to retain a monopoly on the implementation of monetary policy.
By Ekaterina Ulyanova