Busan The First to Implement a DID Service for ID Verification

Today Busan Metropolitan City and Busan Blockchain Regulatory Free Zone announced that they would provide a mobile identity verification service based on blockchain technology. This service would replace the digital identification verification authentication which was decommissioned earlier this year in South Korea.

The service will allow residents to register for a digital identity card on the Busan Blockchain Experience app without sharing a physical ID card or any sensitive personal information over the network. Users of the app will be issued digital ID cards that need to be displayed upon entering municipal government buildings. Digital library cards could also become a reality through the app and even potentially be used in a non-face-to-face application.

In addition to the digital ID cards, families can apply for a digital version of family welfare subsidy cards that would essentially be issued via the new non-face-to-face method, a contemporary civil necessity in the Covid-19 world.

“Public services using blockchain technology such as DIDs will be quickly established in line with the implementation of a revised electronic signature law that includes the abolition of public certificates and changes in the non-face-to-face digital industry environment in the COVID-19 era,” a Busan official was quoted as saying.

As the developer of the app, Coinplug dives into another high-profile partnership involving blockchain technology and public services. Just last week they announced the blacklist sharing service which will aid investors in making sound investment decisions by revealing wallet addresses that have been linked with fraud and scams.

The announcement of Busan’s new service comes just a week after the governor of the South Gyeongsang Province, where Busan is found, proclaimed a commitment to develop further DID applications explicitly to reduce face-to-face contact between residents of the province.

To realize that commitment, the governor launched the Blockchain Pilot Project which was selected and promoted by the Ministry of Science and ICT and KISA. With the support of major players Raonsecure and Adbank forming a participation consortium, a digital system with a wide range of public services is being developed.

The city plans to tie in digital vouchers for retail goods and services at local cafes and cafeterias. This could also mean that the local government’s DID app could at some point tie in with an existing digital currency issuance platform in the same province from SK C&C called Chainjet and Warm Change. Through the new service, local governments can issue local currencies as Social Value local money, similar to how donations made on Warm Change are done exclusively with Social Value Dollars (SVD).

If Chainjet and the new Busan Blockchain Experience app were to piggyback off of each other, it would mean an expanded collaboration between one of South Korea’s largest IT and telecomms giants and the second largest city in the country.

The new app is a major breakthrough in the blockchain-based security field. If it is successful, there is the real possibility that other local and metro governments, namely Seoul, will adopt similar services to serve their residents. In many ways Busan and the surrounding South Gyeongsang Province have served as a hotbed for blockchain technology research, development, and integration in the past year. The app is the product of a special permission granted by the Ministry of Science and ICT nearly 2 years ago for companies under the stewardship of the Busan government to test the capabilities of such services.

Other blockchain-based DID projects under development with blessings from the Ministry of Science and ICT include a mobile drivers license service which has been launched privately already and will likely be available to the public nationally by the end of the year.

From the Busan Blockchain Regulatory-free Zone several exciting blockchain-based technical solutions to private, municipal, and public problems are expected to emerge over the course of the next few years. Already 5 programs are in the testing ground waiting for approval for official launch and a Hyperledger service is already being implemented at Busan Port Authority.

Several area universities have launched their own training and graduate programs both independently and with the financial support from the Korean government.