Korean markets, explained with data.
Korean markets, in numbers
Stocks, the won, bonds, commodities and the economy behind them. Every story here starts from an official Korean government data release and states the exact timestamp of the figures it uses. No tips, no targets — just what the data shows and what it does not.
Where the market actually moved
Two years of daily closes, and every index we track measured from the KOSPI's06/22 peak. Sources and method are in the articles below.
2,777.68 → 6,257.45 · peak 06/22, now -31.3%
29,188.19 → 98,888.21 · peak 06/22, now -38.7%
912.52 → 1,623.13 · peak 02/20, now -9.8%
In Korea, bigger employers pay more — and the pension data shows it rising at every single step.
Sort 554,570 workplaces by headcount and the national-pension bill per worker climbs monotonically: 291,760 won at the smallest firms, 456,315 at the largest. No band breaks the ladder. The size premium is 1.56x.
Eight Korean brokers publish fractional-share lists. Only 46 stocks are buyable at all eight.
The industry body posts each broker's list of stocks you can own in fractions. Put the eight side by side and the longest list turns out to be mostly sell-only — and 1,202 of the 2,586 listed stocks cannot be bought in fractions anywhere.
Korea has 183,351 registered funds, and the factory that makes them is slowing down.
New fund registrations peaked in 2020 near 6,000 a year and have roughly halved since. What Korea launches is mostly derivatives and bonds — equity funds are one in ten. Among funds that name a country, America outnumbers China two to one.
Korea's import prices rose 9% in the seller's currency and 20% in won. The gap is the exchange rate.
Priced in the currency each contract is written in, Korea's imports cost 9.1% more over the year to June. In won they cost 19.7% more. The 33-point gap between the two indices is not the goods getting dearer — it is the won getting weaker.
In one Korean province, workers leave the payroll fastest — and it pays the least.
Each month a share of enrolled workers drops out of workplace pension coverage. On the tourism island of Jeju it is 4.28%; in research-heavy Daejeon, 3.12%. Across regions, higher pay and lower churn move together.
Every kind of Korean bank loan turned more variable this year. Companies moved fastest.
The fixed-rate share of outstanding bank loans fell across corporates, households and mortgages over the year to June. Companies led it, dropping nearly eight points to 31%. Mortgages stayed the most fixed, at 63%.
Market value per employee ranges 3,100-fold across Korean firms. Almost all of it is an artifact.
Divide a company's market cap by its staff and the spread is absurd — 3,100 times. Remove the holding companies and pre-revenue biotech, and what survives is a 17-fold gap between industries: capital intensity, not what anyone produced.
The older an industry's firms, the fewer workers it loses. In Korea the link is strong.
Across 105 industries, average firm age and monthly separation rate move inversely, with a correlation of -0.61. Banks are old and stable; construction is young and churns. Stability, it turns out, has an age.
Korea's oldest workplaces are its banks. Its youngest are building sites and coffee shops.
Measured by years enrolled in the pension system, domestic banks average 33 and credit unions 32. Earthmoving and electrical-wiring contractors average barely two. An industry's age maps how it is built.
Korea's pay map doesn't put Seoul on top. A shipbuilding city does.
Averaged across every enrolled workplace, the national-pension bill is highest in Ulsan, not the capital. Top to bottom, the regional spread is just 1.21x — the smallest of the axes that move Korean pay.
Korea's smallest firms lose workers 1.6x as fast as its largest. The pay ladder runs the other way.
Each month, small workplaces shed 4.29% of their enrolled workers; the biggest shed 2.66%. Hiring falls with size too. The firm that pays the most also holds onto people the longest.
Six in ten formally employed Koreans work in the capital region. It barely pays more.
The Seoul metro area holds 61.2% of enrolled workers on a footprint that pays a 1.21x premium at most — and less than that once the pension ceiling and Seoul's rents are taken into account. The pull isn't the paycheque.
Korea's convertibles create new shares at a 24% discount. Cash raises, 12%.
Measured against the market price on the day the shares are created, convertibles dilute at a 23.8% discount and cash raises at 12.5%. Control for the 456 companies that used both and the convertible still discounts 7.7 points deeper.
Korea's pension bill sorts 11.6 million workers into a pay ladder. Top to bottom, 2.3 times.
Every employer is billed 9% of a worker's pay for the national pension, up to a ceiling. Rank Korea's 41 biggest industries by that bill per head and imaging-equipment plants sit 2.3 times above employment agencies.
Korea runs a $188bn trade surplus. Almost none of it is with China.
China is Korea's biggest partner both ways, and the two nearly cancel — a $9bn surplus on $330bn of trade. The surplus is earned from the US, Vietnam and a Hong Kong that forwards most goods on. The deficits are oil, gas and machinery.
One in three Korean listed companies files its headcount in pieces. Forty-two add it up.
The employee table in a Korean annual report carries no required total. Read only the first row — as we did until yesterday — and 482,227 people disappear from a sample of 853,817.
Korean firms with more women underperformed by 17 points last year. Control for industry and the gap vanishes.
Across 2,573 listed companies, staff tenure and female share both look like they predict returns — in opposite directions. They are the same fact counted twice. One survives an industry control; the other does not.
Korean analysts didn't just stop saying sell. They stopped saying hold.
Across 55,580 rated broker reports since 2014, the neutral rating has fallen from 9.7% to 3.3% of all calls. The collapse happened in two steps, in 2018 and 2020, and it shows up inside individual firms — not just in the market average.
China is Korea's biggest trading partner. Its yuan futures are 0.03% of the market.
Across 629 trading days, 99.0% of Korean currency-futures turnover was one contract: the dollar. The exchange also lists 1,272 flexible-dated dollar futures that have never traded once.
A Korean ETF above its stated value falls back tomorrow — unless it holds Asian stocks, in which case it rises
Across 605,072 fund-days, a premium on a domestic or US-tracking ETF predicts a 0.48-point underperformance tomorrow. On an Asia-tracking synthetic fund it predicts a 0.32-point gain. Same number, opposite meaning.
Korea's exchange-traded gold has fallen 31% since January, and the small-lot contract is busier than ever
Six and a half years of Korea Exchange gold prints: up 228% overall, up 60% in 2025, then down 30.9% from a peak set on 29 January. Turnover in the 100-gram contract is running 72% above last year through the whole decline.
Four of Korea's ten best-paying listed companies employ fewer than 200 people
Every listed company files its average pay per employee. Read the ranking without checking headcount and you will misread what it measures — four of the top ten are head offices, not workforces.
Korea's provinces all borrow at the same price — the gaps are empty order books
Seventeen regional governments issue near-identical bonds. In the vintages that actually trade, the widest gap between any two provinces is 3.2 basis points — narrower than the day-to-day swing inside a single province's own bond.
In 76 percent of Korea's large listed companies, men stay longer than women
Companies file average tenure by gender in their own annual reports. Across 1,836 listed firms employing 1.81 million people, the weighted gap is 2.11 years — and it is widest in the industries Korea exports.
The KOSPI has moved more than 3% on 53 days this year. The five years before it managed 20.
Korea's benchmark is down 31.3% from its 22 June peak and still up 48.5% on the year. The drawdown is the smaller story: the average daily move has tripled, and July alone had ten sessions above 5%.
Korean banks are up 6% since the KOSPI peaked. The index is down 31% because it is 60% semiconductors.
Of 160 tradeable Korea Exchange indices, twelve have risen since 22 June. Electronics is 60.1% of KOSPI market capitalisation, fell 38.7%, and dragged the benchmark with it. Banks, pharma and staples never joined the fall.
Korean brokerages posted 26,051 stock reports in three years. Twenty-six said sell.
A complete census of every company report published to Korea's most-read retail research board finds sell ratings at 0.114 percent — one for every 838 buys. Thirteen of the twenty firms never issued a single one.
Korea publishes two housing numbers. They routinely disagree, and both are right.
Transaction records say what actually sold. The official index says which way the market moved. In a thin market these diverge — and the gap is the story, not an error in either.
Who watches Korea's private fund managers? Less of the market than you would think
A licensed manager can run hundreds of billions of won, trade listed shares daily on its own account, and disclose none of it in a form the public can search. Here is exactly where the record stops.
Why the Korean market numbers you can legally read are always a day old
The data this site publishes settles on a one-business-day lag — not by editorial choice but because that is what the redistributable sources release. One exception changes what is possible.
The Seoul Markets Brief
One email. Korean equities, the won, rates and the economy behind them — with the source and the timestamp attached to every figure. Including the one thing nobody else publishes in English: how close Korean brokerage target prices actually landed.
Equities
Listed Korean stocks, indices, ETFs and equity derivatives.
FX
The won against the dollar and its major crosses, plus currency futures.
Rates
Korean government and corporate bonds, yields, and the policy rate.
Commodities
Oil, gold and emissions traded through Korean venues.
Funds
Korean fund performance, fees and the managers behind them.
Macro
Growth, prices, employment and the external balance.