Anchor: The KOSDAQ, South Korea’s secondary stock exchange, surpassed the one-thousand mark Monday, prompting excitement and caution. The index hit the milestone for the first time in four years on the back of renewed investor optimism.
Rosyn Park has more.

Report: The tech-heavy KOSDAQ rose 70-point-48 points, or seven-point-09 percent, to close at one-thousand-64-point-41 on Monday.

It set a new high for the year and also marked the first time the index climbed above one-thousand points since January 2022.

The index opened at one-thousand-three-point-nine, up one percent from the previous session, according to the Korea Exchange, and continued to surge, triggering a buy-sidecar, or a five-minute trading halt to curb excessive volatility, around an hour after the market opened.

Amid widespread gains across the top ten KOSDAQ market capitalization stocks, foreign investors and domestic institutions have been driving the market’s recent rally with net buying.

The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index also started higher and set a new all-time intraday high of five-thousand-23-point-76.

By the end of trading, the index lost 40-point-48 points to close at four-thousand-949-point-59.

The South Korean won, meanwhile, strengthened against the U.S. dollar by 25-point-two won, trading at one-thousand-440-point-six won as of 3:30 p.m.

Amid the recent sharp rise in the exchange rate, President Lee Jae Myung said last week that it would drop to around one-thousand-400 won in a month or two, signaling efforts to stabilize the FX market.
Rosyn Park, KBS World Radio News.