The South Korean central bank’s digital currency pilot is criticized for lacking independent external security verification.

PANews, July 21 reports that, according to data from South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service cited by Korean media Maeil Business, during the first-phase pilot program of the CBDC led by the Bank of Korea, the financial authorities did not conduct any independent security verification, and only participated banks carried out pre-launch security reviews on their own. Before the program began, IT vulnerability self-assessments were conducted only for the participating banks, carried out jointly by the Financial Security Institute, SK Shields, and a self-check working group of Woori Bank and Nonghyup Bank, forming an assessment model of “self-checking by the regulated parties.” In the central bank’s pilot results report, it acknowledged outside doubts about the security of deposit tokens and responded that the pre-review had been sufficient; however, critics pointed out that this explanation is a self-assessment and not an independent third-party verification.