South Korea's benchmark KOSPI and the secondary KOSDAQ both plunged over eight percent on Monday, prompting authorities to activate circuit breakers to temporarily suspend trading.

The Korea Exchange said it was halting trading on the KOSPI for 20 minutes starting at 2:14 p.m., after meeting the requirement for the index to fall more than eight percent compared to the previous day of trading for at least one minute.

The circuit breaker suspended all trading on the main bourse, as well as stock-related trading on futures and option markets.

At the time of suspension, the KOSPI had lost 216-point-97 points, or eight-point-one percent, from the previous day to two-thousand-459-point-22.

A circuit breaker was also activated for the tech-heavy KOSDAQ at 1:56 p.m., lasting 20 minutes, after it shed 62-point-81 points, or eight-point-06 percent, from the previous day to 716-point-53.

This is the first time circuit breakers have been activated since March 19, 2020.