South Korea to scrap stock market registration requirement for foreigners - regulator

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea will scrap a requirement that foreign investors must register with domestic authorities in order to trade Korean stocks in a move designed to encourage investment from overseas, its financial regulator said on Thursday.

"Instead, foreigners will be allowed to freely invest in our capital markets with internationally used identifications of passport or legal entity identifier (LEI)," said Kim Joo-hyun, Chairman of the Financial Services Commission.

With regard to digital assets, Kim said South Korea will legalise offerings of security tokens and come up with a safe trading system in a proactive and speedy manner to preemptively respond to future technology transformations.

The regulatory agency plans to release more details on measures to improve foreign access to domestic capital markets on Jan. 25 and those on security tokens early next month.

(Reporting by Jihoon Lee; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell)