KOSPI hits a new all-time high, surpassing 7,400 points after a year.

KOSPI closed at 7,384.56 points on May 6, 2026, hitting a historic high. During the trading session, it briefly broke through the 7,400-point level, and the Korean stock market has entered a completely different situation in just one year. Back in spring 2025, the Korean stock market was also once threatened by the 2,300-point support line due to political uncertainty and the impact of reciprocal tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump. However, since then, as foreign capital supply and demand have recovered, policy expectations have strengthened, and performance improvements centered on semiconductors have added momentum, the rebound trend has continued sharply.

According to data from the Korea Exchange, on that day the KOSPI rose by 447.57 points (6.45%) from the previous trading day and closed at 7,384.56 points. After opening at 7,093.01 points, the gains kept expanding; the index first broke through the 7,000-point threshold during the session and then briefly surpassed 7,400 points. The starting point of the market sentiment shift can be traced back to around April 2025. At that time, foreign investors had been selling shares on a net basis for the long term, citing Korea’s political risk and the trade pressure triggered by the United States. After signs emerged that political uncertainty was easing, and in an environment where the U.S. dollar weakened, global liquidity shifted toward risk assets, reviving buying interest in the Korean stock market. In addition, expectations for fiscal expansion to stimulate the economy helped the index recover the 3,000-point level on June 20, 2025, closing at 3,021.84 points. Later that same year, on October 27, it broke through the 4,000-point threshold again, closing at 4,042.83 points.

One feature of this rally is that the stock market’s rise does not rely solely on expectations. The government has rolled out a series of so-called capital market “advancement” policies, including revisions to the Commercial Act, pushing for mandatory stock cancellation, and discussing classification taxation on dividend income, aiming to address what has long been referred to as a stubborn problem of the Korean stock market—the “Korean discount,” meaning the phenomenon in which domestic corporate value is not given reasonable recognition. In particular, institutional changes—such as strengthening directors’ fiduciary duties to shareholders and expanding mechanisms to check and balance controlling shareholders—have been seen by individual investors as signals that “market rules are changing.” As a result, the once-strong atmosphere of skepticism that “it’s better to avoid the domestic stock market” rapidly shifted. After the KOSPI first closed above 5,000 points on January 27 this year, it crossed 6,000 points again on February 25. According to statistics from the Korea Financial Investment Association, the number of stock trading accounts at the end of last month reached 150.9 million, up 6.9% from the end of last year, which also reflects this enthusiasm among individual investors.

At the center of this upward cycle are industries related to semiconductors and artificial intelligence infrastructure. As major global technology companies continue to make large-scale investments in competition driven by artificial intelligence, expectations that semiconductor supply shortages will persist over the long term have increased. As a result, performance expectations for representative semiconductor stocks, such as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, have also risen quickly. In fact, the operating profits recently announced by these two companies for this year’s first quarter increased by 755% and 405.5%, respectively, compared with the same period last year, supporting market expectations. Although trade disputes and wars have made the outlook for the global economy unstable overall, money has flowed into industries where the performance improvement path appears relatively clear even amid this uncertainty. Reflecting this trend, the total market capitalization of the Korean stock market first surpassed 60 trillion won on April 27, 2026, and has since risen to 673.3 trillion won, reaching a level that is approaching 700 trillion won.

Of course, concerns about market overheating have continued both inside and outside the market. In March this year, affected by the Iran war, the KOSPI briefly plunged 19.2% from the end of the previous month, and volatility expanded significantly. Debates over an artificial intelligence bubble centered on U.S. technology stocks also added pressure on the Korean stock market. However, there are also many views in the securities industry that it is too early to conclude that there is a serious overvaluation based only on the current level of stock prices. The KOSPI price-to-earnings ratio (PER, defined as stock price divided by earnings per share) was 12.02 on April 9, 2025, and rose to 26.41 by May 4, 2026. But compared with the PER of 26.04 for the components of the U.S. S&P 500 index in the same period, some have said it is not particularly abnormal. The price-to-book ratio (PBR) also increased from 0.80 to 2.12, but compared with the 5.44 level in the U.S. market, it can still be seen as being within a conservative range. Ultimately, the current KOSPI is better interpreted not as a market rising purely on expectations, but as the combined result of policy changes, performance improvements, and the recovery in supply and demand. Looking ahead, depending on the semiconductor industry cycle, global liquidity, and the government’s continued commitment to capital market reforms, this trend could bring further upside along with a wider range of volatility.