The South Korean stock market opened significantly weak following an overnight U.S. stock market crash.  

The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index(KOSPI) stood at one-thousand-640-point-84 points when trading began at 9 a.m, down by 74-point-02 points, or four-point-32 percent, from Monday’s closing. 

The Dow Jones Industrial Average on Monday shed two-thousand-997-point-10 points, or 12-point-93 percent, logging its steepest loss since October 1987. 

The market plunges came even after the U.S. Federal Reserve slashed the key interest rate by a full percentage point to virtually zero on Sunday in an effort to ease the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

In a similar response to COVID-19, the Bank of Korea(BOK) also cut its key interest rate by a half of a percentage point to zero-point-75 percent on Monday.