Anchor: Following the largest one-day point decline and a loss of nearly nine percent the previous session, South Korea's main KOSPI gained over three percent on Tuesday. South Korea's finance minister and the central bank chief said that stock markets in South Korea and other parts of Asia overreacted on Monday after shares tumbled on Wall Street amid concerns over a U.S. economic slump.
Kim Bum-soo has more. 

Anchor: South Korea's benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index, or KOSPI, jumped over three percent, recovering from the massive plunge the previous day.

KOSPI on Tuesday rose 80-point-six points, or three-point-three percent, to close at two-thousand-522-point-15.  

The main bourse lost eight-point 77 percent the previous day amid fears that the U.S. economy is losing momentum.

The tech-heavy KOSDAQ, which had lost over eleven percent the previous session, climbed 41-point-59 points, or six-point-02 percent, to close at 732-point-87.

Sidecar curbs were triggered on both the KOSPI and KOSDAQ to temporarily halt program trading in a mechanism activated during periods of extreme market volatility. 

In an interview with KBS World News, Gary Ng, senior economist at Natixis Corporate & Investment Banking, pointed to the U.S. economic outlook and geopolitical risks in the Middle East as key factors behind the sell-off in Asia. He added that the U.S. Fed is expected to counter the situation with gradual rate cuts. 

[Sound bite: Gary Ng - Senior Economist at Natixis Corporate & Investment Banking] 
"I do think that the U.S. Fed wants to cut and some of the data points released in recent months actually support that narrative but whether it will cut as much as the market expects at more than one-hundred basis points in 2024, that I think is actually a quite a rare scenario. I think that the base line scenario is the Fed considering cutting 25 basis points in September. There could be another 25 basis points in November... "

Seoul's finance minister Choi Sang-mok, Bank of Korea Governor Rhee Chang-yong and heads of the nation's financial watchdogs held a meeting on Tuesday.  

They identified economic concerns following weak U.S. employment data from July, worrisome performance by major tech companies and aggravated unrest in the Middle East as factors that led to plunging shares in the U.S. 

They agreed, however, that stock markets in South Korea and other parts of Asia overreacted on Monday, stressing the government and the central bank have sufficient policy response capability against market variability from external shocks.
Kim Bum-soo, KBS World Radio News.