The Current State of the Stock-Trading Craze Among Young Korean Women

Since the start of 2026, the South Korean KOSPI index has cumulatively risen nearly 74%, outperforming global stock markets and igniting a nationwide frenzy for retail stock trading: with a population of 51 million, South Korea has opened more than 100 million stock accounts in total. Young retail investors aged 20-30 make up 62% of the trading group. Among them, young women are a particularly core participant segment—from new office workers and housewives to female entertainers and female bloggers, many are pouring in. Even female fresh graduates with only 1 year of work experience have relied on stock market returns to earn the equivalent of 5 years’ salary.

Well-Looked-At Cases of Female Investors

1. An anonymous office woman born in 1992: She shared her investment results in an anonymous Korean workplace community, investing in the semiconductor sector for 6 years; her personal assets have grown to 2.6 billion Korean won (about RMB 13.8 million), sparking extensive discussion among netizens;
2. Byeon Jeong-su (model/actress): She publicly said she uses ChatGPT to help select stocks, mainly investing in semiconductor-related assets such as SK Hynix. She has already recovered all her original principal and continues trading using only the profit portion;
3. Female entertainers Jeon Won-ju and Jo Yu (Jo Yu): They have held Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix stocks for a long time. Jeon Won-ju’s returns on SK Hynix are over 70x, and Jo Yu even used the gains from her 10-year-held stocks to purchase real estate.

Risk Warnings

In this frenzy, many young retail investors are piling into semiconductor-related ETFs with 3x leverage. The proportion of margin financing trading in the Korean stock market surged from 2025’s 18% to more than 35%, and many investors have also been trapped after buying at high levels: Ahokki (Kim Min-young), a female blogger with 770,000 followers, recently publicly shared her experience of getting trapped at the peak, which resonated strongly with a large number of retail traders. The risks of high-leverage investing need to be treated with caution. In addition, Lee Seul-phe, a netizen influencer once dubbed the “stock goddess,” was sentenced to 8 years in prison due to a stock-recommendation fraud case involving a scale of 16 billion Korean won. Following so-called “pretty big V” stock-picking recommendations and investing requires even greater caution. #SKHYNIX $SKHYNIX