Kosdaq Sheds Nearly Half Its Value Since April Peak

South Korea’s secondary Kosdaq index has wiped out nearly half its value since its April peak and is closing in on the low it hit after the December 2024 martial law crisis, The Korea Herald reported, citing Korea Exchange data.

The Kosdaq ended Monday at 638.97, down 0.82% on the day and 47.9% below its April 27 closing high of 1,226.18. Over the same period the main Kospi index has fallen about 24%, closing Monday at 5,018.85, meaning the tech- and biotech-heavy Kosdaq has dropped almost twice as far.

Monday’s level leaves the Kosdaq 5.6% under its Dec. 4, 2024 close of 677.15, the first trading day after then-President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law. It is now less than 12 points above the Dec. 9, 2024 low of 627.01, the newspaper said.

Biggest names hit hard

Drugmaker Alteogen, the only Kosdaq-listed firm still valued above 10 trillion won ($7.4 billion), slumped 16% to 168,400 won on Monday over concerns that US drug pricing rules could hit its royalties, according to the Herald. The move cut its market value by about 2.2 trillion won to 11.7 trillion won, down from close to 30 trillion won a year earlier.

Battery materials makers EcoPro and EcoPro BM, the index’s second- and third-largest stocks, each lost more than 8% on the day. Both had once been worth over 10 trillion won, a group that also previously included HLB, ABL Bio, Sam Chun Dang Pharm, Rainbow Robotics and Jusung Engineering.

The Herald said 572 Kosdaq stocks touched intraday lows for the year during the first week of November, when the index fell 11.1% across five sessions. It also noted that institutions accounted for only 4.5% of Kosdaq turnover, less than a third of their share on the Kospi, based on government figures released in December 2025.

Kosdaq and broader market rout

The slide follows a sharp sell-off across Korean equities last week. On Friday the Kospi plunged 6.02% to 5,059.69 after an intraday fall of 8.78% triggered a circuit breaker, as fears of tighter regulation on AI data centre investment after the US midterm elections hit chipmakers Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, The Korea Herald reported. The Kosdaq lost 5.03% that day.

Foreign investors were net sellers of about 2.77 trillion won of main-board shares on Friday, according to both the Herald and the Seoul Economic Daily.

What’s next

Kiwoom Securities has set an expected Kospi range of 4,800 to 5,350 for this week, the Seoul Economic Daily reported. Kiwoom analyst Han Ji-young said any recovery would depend first on major macro and AI earnings events, with US consumer and producer price data, comments from Federal Reserve officials and results from CoreWeave and Applied Materials due this week.

On the policy side, regulators in September pushed back a planned rise in the Kosdaq’s minimum market capitalisation requirement from 20 billion won to 30 billion won, moving its start date from January to July 2027, the Herald said.

#businessnews