27 Years Ago, "If You Want to Make Money, Go to KOSDAQ"... How Can It Escape the 'Minor League' Label?

[Anchor]

In three days, the KOSDAQ market will mark its 30th anniversary. Starting at 1,000 points three decades ago, the index has actually regressed to the 850-point range today.

Reporter Min Gyeongho examines whether the market can shed its stigma as the "minor league of the KOSPI" and restore investor confidence.

[Reporter]

Twenty-seven years ago, investors viewed the KOSDAQ market, which was hitting new highs amid the IT bubble, with great enthusiasm.

[KOSDAQ Investor (December 1999): If you want to make money, you have to be on the KOSDAQ.]

[KOSDAQ Investor (December 1999): I invested almost all of my retirement money here.]

How do investors feel in 2026, as the market reaches its 30th anniversary?

[Kim Chan-young / Namyangju, Gyeonggi Province: There are so many different companies that I don't really know how to build a strategy. It feels a bit difficult to approach.]

[Lee Jun-hak / Cheonan, South Chungcheong Province: There are many penny stocks, and there are so many cases of sudden spikes and drops that it's scary to invest.]

The current KOSDAQ index is not even one-third of its all-time high recorded in March 2000.

Although it surpassed 1,200 in April for the first time in 26 years, it has been falling continuously since then.

[Myeong Jin-geon / Guro-gu, Seoul: Even though it seems like the government is paying attention to the KOSDAQ, the fact that it is like this leads to a loss of trust in the market itself.]

The recurring trend of top-tier companies moving to the KOSPI—starting with NCSoft in 2003, followed by NHN, Kakao, and Celltrion—is cited as one of the reasons for the 25-year stagnation.

As market capitalization shrinks and the perception of it being a "minor league" strengthens, investor sentiment has withered.

The remaining companies have fallen into a vicious cycle.

[Lee Jun-seo / Professor of Business Administration, Dongguk University: The companies that remain are perceived as inferior... For the 1,500 to 1,600 companies on the KOSDAQ, excluding a small minority, the situation could become much worse than it is now.]

With two-thirds of unfair trading cases last year concentrated in the KOSDAQ market, it has also failed to shake off its image as a "playground for market manipulators."

The government plans to enhance market trust by weeding out insolvent companies, such as by tightening delisting criteria and removing penny stocks priced below 1,000 won starting July 1.

It also expects that introducing a promotion and relegation system for innovative company groups in the second half of the year will increase investment appeal.

Experts suggest that along with these measures, it is ultimately important to strengthen the fundamentals of the KOSDAQ market—such as by developing proprietary indices to attract ETF capital—so that even KOSPI-listed companies would want to move to the KOSDAQ.

Reported by Min Gyeongho | Video by Park Jin-ho | Video Editing by Kim Jong-tae | Graphics by Seo Hyun-joong and Kim Han-gil
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.