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Good practice Imported

ICONLOOP's Blockchain Mobile Driver's License — Testing Decentralized ID Under Korea's ICT Regulatory Sandbox

South Korea · Seoul · See the South Korea profile · See the Seoul profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 24% 73/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT granted ICONLOOP regulatory-sandbox approval in December 2020 to pilot a blockchain-based mobile driver's license, building on its decentralized-ID tech already used for Jeju contact tracing and recruiter credential checks.

Details

Maturity
Pilot
Promoter
ICONLOOP (with Ministry of Science and ICT)
Period
2020–2021
Keywords
digital identity, e-government, blockchain

Context

South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT approved ICONLOOP on 31 December 2020 under the national ICT Regulatory Sandbox to develop and test a blockchain-based mobile driver's license using the firm's Decentralized Identity (DID) technology, delivered through its Zzeung app.

Objectives

Replace the physical, forgeable driver's license card with a cryptographically verifiable credential citizens control on their own device, while regulators assessed forgery-prevention and data-protection safeguards before any nationwide rule change.

Activities

The sandbox approval built on DID deployments ICONLOOP already ran in the public sector: Jeju Island's government used the same technology for COVID-19 contact tracing, and recruitment platform SaraminHR used it to verify job applicants' credentials. The mobile license itself was expected to launch in the second half of 2021.

Conclusions

Sources confirm the sandbox approval and the two prior DID use cases but do not report post-launch adoption or fraud-prevention figures for the driver's-license product, so this remains evidence of a credible, regulator-approved pilot rather than a measured mass rollout.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k)
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years)
Staffing & skills
Ministry of Science and ICT regulators, ICONLOOP technical team

Conditions for success

  • Prior track record from two independent DID deployments (Jeju contact tracing, SaraminHR credential checks) that regulators could evaluate before extending the model to a national ID document
  • Operation through a formal ICT Regulatory Sandbox with defined forgery-prevention and data-protection review before rollout

Common failure modes

  • No published post-launch data on licenses issued or fraud prevented, limiting independent verification of the pilot's real-world performance

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

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