Kospi crossed 5,000 for the first time ever this week, hitting that number on Thursday before closing a bit lower at 4,952.53.
The index is now up nearly 20% in January, powered by massive gains in chip stocks and new rules meant to weaken the grip of family-controlled conglomerates.
President Lee Jae Myung has been pushing both ideas hard, and for once, the chart seems to agree with him. This guy told voters he’d get Kospi to 5,000 during his term. Well, congrats to him!
The run was [naturally] led by Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, the two giants at the heart of the AI chip frenzy. Their rise hasn’t been slow folks.
Samsung is up nearly three times from last year, now trading at ₩154,700. SK Hynix has been even hotter, climbing almost four times to ₩766,000. Put together, these two now make up more than a third of the whole Kospi.
Lee targets family control and low dividends
When Lee won the election last June, he made it clear he wasn’t playing the old game. He promised to fight what’s been called the “Korea discount,” the problem where investors avoid Korean stocks because they’re tired of family dynasties calling the shots.
One of the first steps to that actually came in July last year, when Lee’s team changed the Commercial Act. The new rule makes it a legal duty for company directors to care about all shareholders, not just the company or its insiders.
Critics say the old rule just gave more power to chaebol families, who already own most of the market behind closed doors.
Now the government wants to take it further. Lee’s team is working on a plan to cancel treasury shares. These are shares companies usually keep in their own hands to protect insiders. Killing those shares would boost earnings per share and give more control to outside investors. They’re also using tax cuts to get companies to pay more in dividends, which have always lagged behind what’s paid in other countries.
Lee posted in April, when the index was still below 2,500, “If we establish a fair and reasonable corporate governance mechanism and market order, our stock market will take a stunning leap forward.”
Korean retail traders miss the rally as economy slows
While global funds and institutional traders piled into the rally, regular Koreans (the so-called “ants”) weren’t around to enjoy it. Korea Exchange data shows retail investors were net sellers last year. They pulled out as the rally was building.
Still, some stocks outside of chips caught fire. Samsung SDI, which makes batteries, jumped 18.67%. Doosan, a major industrial group, climbed 9.09%. Even Samsung Electronics, already flying high, gained another 1.87% during the week.
But the real economy isn’t celebrating. GDP shrank 0.3% in the final three months of 2025. That’s the worst quarterly reading since 2022. Full-year growth came in at just 1%, the weakest since 2020, when the country was deep in the pandemic and output fell 0.7%.
Around the region, the vibe was a little better. Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 1.73%, closing at 53,688.89 and breaking a five-day losing streak.
Topix added 0.74% to end at 3,616.38. In Australia, the ASX 200 went up 0.75%, finishing at 8,848.70. In China, the Shanghai Composite ticked up 0.14%, Hang Seng added 0.17%, and the CSI 300 barely moved, up 0.01%.
