![\"Choi](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/news-p.v1.20260802.9dca62c38a564af9b02805765ab397ad_P1.jpg\"\/ "\\"Korea")
Choi Woo-hyung (right), CEO of K Bank, and Jung Kyu-il, head of the securities market division at the Korea Exchange, pose for a commemorative photo at K Bank’s KOSPI listing ceremony held at the Korea Exchange in Yeouido, Seoul, in March this year. Photo courtesy of the Korea Exchange<\/p>\n
If a direct path to the Select league, the top tier, becomes possible next year alongside the reorganization of KOSDAQ’s tiered segment structure, attempts by high-quality companies to enter the KOSDAQ market are expected to increase. Since the core goal of the reorganization is to nurture a group of premier companies that can represent KOSDAQ, a virtuous cycle could begin if ventures and startups recognized by the market for their growth potential actively step forward. Analysts say that if KOSDAQ listings by unicorn companies with valuations reaching trillions of won increase, it would contribute to invigorating the market as well as closing the gap in initial public offering (IPO) size with the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) main board. However, the industry consensus is that, since standards will inevitably be more demanding than the current KOSDAQ listing requirements, the number of companies actually able to pursue an IPO targeting the Select league will be limited.<\/p>\n
According to the Korea Exchange (KRX) on the 2nd, there were 29 new listings on the KOSDAQ market (including SPACs) from the start of this year through the 31st of last month. While new listings vastly outnumber those on KOSPI (one listing), the average market capitalization and offering amounts fall far short. In particular, this year’s total KOSDAQ offering amount stood at around 856.3 billion won, and the gap with KOSPI (498 billion won) in offering scale is not large relative to the difference in the number of listings.<\/p>\n
This phenomenon repeats every year. KOSDAQ’s average offering size has stayed in the mid-to-high 20 billion won range over five years, while KOSPI has recorded figures in the basic range of hundreds of billions of won. In particular, in 2022, when LG Energy Solution went public, the average offering size reached as much as 3.3 trillion won.<\/p>\n
Market cap is even more severe. In the case of KOSPI, there have been many years when the average market cap of newly listed companies (based on offering price) far exceeds 10 trillion won, whereas KOSDAQ has been unable to break out of the 100 billion won range. Given the situation, companies seeking high valuations have no choice but to prioritize a KOSPI listing over KOSDAQ. Moreover, with domestic stock market supply and demand recently concentrated on KOSPI, the sluggishness of the KOSDAQ index has emerged as a major factor making high-quality companies hesitant to head to KOSDAQ. KOSDAQ, which surged to the 1,200 level this year, was pushed down to the 630 range as the domestic stock market underwent a sharp correction, effectively cutting it in half.<\/p>\n
Since the government aims to expand the inflow of long-term funds from institutional investors through the tiered segment reorganization and to invigorate the market on that basis, if a direct path to the Select league becomes possible, it is expected to draw the attention of companies hoping for large-scale offerings. In particular, the prevailing view is that it will serve as an incentive for unicorn companies already recognized by the market with trillion-won valuations to choose KOSDAQ instead of KOSPI. The exchange is also reviewing measures to allow direct listing on the Select league with this point in mind. At the same time, it is expected to be able to play the role of a middle ground filling the gap between KOSPI and the current KOSDAQ IPO, which will become the Standard league.<\/p>\n
The exchange is currently reviewing the direct Select league listing plan internally and has not yet officially begun the process of gathering opinions from the IPO industry, according to sources. However, since it must disclose detailed guidelines for the KOSDAQ tiered segment within the year, it is highly likely to go through a process of hearing public opinion several times, similar to the case of dual listings. The market views the direct Select league listing plan positively. The reasons are that diversifying the paths to entering the stock market will allow more active discovery of promising companies and diversification of equity story (growth strategy) structures.<\/p>\n
However, since it is regarded as effectively a foregone conclusion that the threshold for a direct path to the Select league will be higher than the current KOSDAQ listing, the view both inside and outside the industry is that the number of companies able to clear it will not be large. The exchange’s plan is to selectively list companies on the Select market by considering not only a company’s growth potential but also its profitability and market capitalization. An IPO industry official noted, “Companies with valuations reaching trillions of won will want to go straight to Select rather than Standard,” adding, “In effect, I think the biggest rationale is likely to be drawing promising artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor companies into KOSDAQ.”<\/p>\n
In fact, there are also concerns that this listing method could be concentrated in some promising sectors such as AI and semiconductors. This is because AI and semiconductors have recently established themselves as leading stocks that genuinely drive the domestic stock market, and in global capital markets as well, investors’ attention is focused on semiconductor companies riding expanding AI demand.<\/p>\n
In Korea, Rebellions, FuriosaAI, and Upstage have officially declared their listing challenges and are proceeding with related procedures. In response, the exchange took active steps in May this year, including holding a meeting with the CEOs of these companies to bring them to KOSDAQ. Among them, some companies recently succeeded in large-scale pre-IPO (pre-listing equity investment) and have delayed their listing schedules from initial plans. Therefore, if the system takes effect early next year, they could become strong candidates to head directly to the Select league.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Choi Woo-hyung (right), CEO of K Bank, and Jung Kyu-il, head of the securities market division at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":106822,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[457],"tags":[2504,55089,870,337,55087,335,864,869,55088,871],"class_list":["post-106821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-korea-exchange","tag-ai-semiconductor","tag-direct-listing","tag-furiosaai","tag-korea-exchange","tag-kosdaq-select-league","tag-kospi","tag-krx","tag-rebellions","tag-unicorn-ipo","tag-upstage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}