[Anchor]

In two days, the KOSDAQ market will mark its 30th anniversary. It started at 1,000 points, but it currently sits at 851, having fallen even as the KOSPI index has soared.

Reporter Min Gyeong-ho examines the reasons behind this performance and potential solutions.

[Reporter]

Twenty-seven years ago, investors described the KOSDAQ market, which was hitting record highs during the IT bubble, as follows:

[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 severance pay here.]

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

[Kim Chan-young / Namyangju, Gyeonggi Province: There are so many different companies, and 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 is a lot of volatility with sudden spikes and drops, so it's scary....]

The current KOSDAQ index is less than 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 in a continuous decline since then.

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

The recurring pattern 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 market's 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.... With the exception of a few, the remaining 1,500 to 1,600 companies on the KOSDAQ could face much worse conditions than they do now.]

The market also struggles to shake off its image as a playground for market manipulators, with two-thirds of unfair trading cases last year concentrated on the KOSDAQ.

The government plans to enhance market trust by weeding out insolvent companies, including strengthening 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 say that along with these measures, it is ultimately important to build the substance of the KOSDAQ market—such as by developing proprietary indices to attract ETF capital—to the point where even KOSPI-listed companies would want to move to the KOSDAQ.

Reported by Park Jin-ho | Video by Kim Jong-tae | Graphics by Seo Hyun-joong and Kim Han-gil