Key points
- Kosdaq rose 4.39% to 833.84 by 9:37 a.m. Monday in Seoul, after Friday's close of 798.81.
- The market opened July 1, 1996 at a base of 100. The dealers' association multiplied it by 10 in January 2004 and backdated the change, so the starting line now reads 1,000.
- Its record is 2,834.40, set March 10, 2000, and nothing since has come near it.
- Listings grew from 376 to about 1,822 and market value from 7.3 trillion won ($5.18B USD) to some 479 trillion won ($340B USD), about 66 times.
On the morning of August 10 in Seoul, the Kosdaq moved back over 800. By 9:37 a.m. Korea time, the index was at 833.84, up 4.39% on the day, after closing Friday at 798.81. It opened at 807.66 and has held above 800 all morning. The Kospi was up 1.10% at the same moment.
For the smaller of Korea's two markets, that's a real run. The Kosdaq closed at 644.78 on July 30, which makes this about 29% in seven sessions. There's another number worth setting beside it, though. The Kosdaq opened for business on July 1, 1996, and the index it started from reads 1,000.
The number already got multiplied by 10
That starting figure has a history behind it. When trading began on July 1, 1996 the base index was 100. The first trade involved a predecessor of today's Woori Bank, later reorganized as Hanvit Bank.
On January 26, 2004, the Korea Securities Dealers Association (증권업협회) raised the base from 100 to 1,000 and applied the new figure backward to the 1996 open. The reason given was that indices at home and abroad had settled into the habit of quoting above 1,000 since the mid-1990s, and a three-digit Kosdaq was awkward to compare against them. So every historical Kosdaq number quoted today already carries that multiplier inside it.
The record high is the clearest example. It was set on March 10, 2000, at the top of Korea's venture boom, and it's quoted now as 2,834.40. At the time, it printed as 283.44. By the last trading day of that same year, the index was at 52, which is 520 in today's terms. Nothing in the 26 years since has come near the 2000 high.
Everything grew except the index
The market itself didn't stay small. The Kosdaq opened with 376 companies worth 7.3 trillion won ($5.18B USD) between them. Thirty years on it holds about 1,822 companies worth some 479 trillion won ($340B USD), about 66 times the market value across nearly five times as many companies.
That doesn't mean anyone should have made 66 times their money. New listings and newly issued shares add to a market's total value without lifting the index by the same amount, because the index divisor is adjusted when they arrive. The contrast still says something about how much bigger the market got without producing lasting returns at the index level.
The explanation Korean analysts keep returning to is that the Kosdaq loses the companies that work. Naver, Kakao and Celltrion all began there, and all moved to the Kospi. Alteogen, the largest biotech on the Kosdaq by market value, has been working toward the same move. A departure doesn't knock points off the index by itself, since the divisor is adjusted when a company leaves. What the Kosdaq loses is the earnings growth, the institutional money and the market leadership that company would have brought with it.
"The Kosdaq is currently acting as the Kospi's second string," said Lee Joon-seo, a business administration professor at Dongguk University (동국대학교) who has served as a non-standing member of Korea's Securities and Futures Commission. Lee described the result as a loop that feeds itself. "Companies that grow into strong ones slip away to the Kospi, so you get a vicious cycle where the troubled companies end up making up the majority," Lee said.
An official in the financial industry, quoted without a name in the same report, went further and put a figure on it. Had the strong companies that transferred stayed where they first listed, that person said, the Kosdaq would be somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 today.
The share of Korea's total market value sitting on the Kosdaq tells a version of the same story in a much shorter window. It was about 12% at the start of this year. By the middle of the year, it was about 6%. That halving happened over the months when Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix pulled the Kospi up and then dragged it back down, and the Kosdaq was mostly left out of both directions.
The index does get there sometimes. It crossed 1,000 in January this year for the first time in four years, and Korean investors have a name for the market when it does, 천스닥, the thousand-Kosdaq. It held for a few months. On June 30, the day before the market turned 30, it closed at 916.18, down 1.00% for the year while the Kospi was up 96.69% over the same stretch.
Meanwhile, the Korea Exchange (한국거래소) says it means to rebuild how the market is put together. Chairman Jeong Eun-bo has talked about widening the technology-listing route and adding a system that moves companies up and down between tiers. "We will restore the Kosdaq market's dynamism by reorganizing the market structure," Jeong said. From where the index stood that morning, it would need to rise about another 20% to reach the number it started with.
Sources
- 국민일보, 우량기업 떠나고 천스닥도 버거워… 뒤로 간 '30살 코스닥', on the companies that left for the Kospi and the professor's comments
- CEO스코어데일리, [코스닥 30년]① IMF·닷컴버블 거치며 '벤처의 요람' 됐지만…30년째 넘지 못한 출발선, on the 1996 launch figures, the 2004 rebasing and the Korea Exchange chairman's comments
- 한국민족문화대백과사전, 코스닥 지수, on the January 26, 2004 base change and the reason given for it
- Live index levels are from 한국경제 and 인베스팅닷컴, read at 9:37 a.m. Korea time on August 10, 2026 while the Seoul session was still open
- Our earlier coverage: the Kosdaq's first three straight buy sidecars and the 307 companies facing delisting when it fell under 800
Won figures are converted at 1,410 won to the dollar, the August 10, 2026 rate. Quotes are translated from Korean reporting. This article is for information only and is not investment advice.
