- Korea’s National postal service will be deploying blockchain in its operations
- This will be part of a collaboration with Coinplug and NHN
- A trial will take place in the city of Naju
Blockchain application in various official processes has been ongoing for the last few years and has been applied in every sector of public life, from land registration to energy management. This is because blockchain offers an efficient and organized way for the government to track various processes and reduce human error in the process. Now blockchain is breaking new ground in this regard as the South Korean government is taking it a step further by announcing on June 5, 2019, that the national postal service, Korea Post, will apply blockchain technology to its billing system.
Billing over the blockchain in South Korea
This is part of an ongoing collaboration between the South Korean government and a number of private crypto companies including Coinplug, a crypto exchange system and NHN, a global IT company. This project is being supported with a grant of $677,000 by the South Korean government as part of their efforts.
The project will run under the authority of the Ministry of Science and ICT. The Korea post will be responsible for building a blockchain-based billing system that will be incorporated into the entire postal service and receive support from both Coinplug and NHN.
Local pilot, national plans
While there are plans to have this program added to the national system, a pilot will first be run in the city of Naju, which has become more prominent within the country for its technological innovations. There are also plans to allegedly incorporate blockchain to help to settle overseas remittances, which has proved very popular for both private and public establishments in recent times.
This new project incorporates two of the most popular applications of blockchain, which is in supply chain management and also in payment processing. Given the population of South Korea, there will certainly be a healthy market for this service where should it be successful and be applied nationwide, it could bring blockchain to the forefront of adoption in Korea.
It could also go a long way toward softening certain attitudes towards cryptocurrency within Korea as ICOs are banned within the country. Should blockchain become such an irrefutable part of public life, it could lead to the government having a change of heart towards the industry and possibly reversing the ban.
