{"id":136755,"date":"2026-08-30T09:42:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-30T09:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/136755\/"},"modified":"2026-08-30T09:42:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-30T09:42:10","slug":"naver-nears-grip-on-koreas-unlisted-stock-market-as-review-begins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/136755\/","title":{"rendered":"Naver Nears Grip on Korea’s Unlisted Stock Market as Review Begins"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"YonhapYonhap News<\/p>\n

South Korea’s financial authorities are beginning the review process to institutionalize over-the-counter exchanges for unlisted stocks, a year after preliminary license applications were filed. If regulators decline to apply the principle separating share issuance from distribution to NAVER Financial \u2014 which operates an unlisted stock trading platform and is pursuing an acquisition of Dunamu \u2014 the company is expected to effectively monopolize the market.<\/p>\n

The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) plans to convene an external evaluation committee as early as early next month to review preliminary licenses for investment brokerage dedicated to unlisted stock over-the-counter exchanges, according to the financial investment industry on the 30th. The candidates are NAVER Pay Unlisted, formerly Securities Plus Unlisted, operated by NAVER Financial, and Seoul Exchange Unlisted, operated by Seoul Exchange.<\/p>\n

\"null<\/p>\n

Both platforms have operated since 2020, when unlisted stock brokerage was designated an innovative financial service. They applied for preliminary licenses last September after regulators created a new license category for over-the-counter brokerage of unlisted stocks. New licenses require a sequence of steps: a preliminary application, external committee review, preliminary approval, and then a final license application and review. The committee review marks the start of the first stage toward final approval.<\/p>\n

The central issue before the committee is expected to be whether NAVER Pay Unlisted can continue offering trading services for Dunamu shares once the unlisted stock distribution platform framework is formalized. At present, because unlisted stock brokerage falls under the innovative financial service designation, Dunamu shares trade on NAVER Pay Unlisted without restriction.<\/p>\n

NAVER Pay Unlisted was originally Securities Plus Unlisted, created by Dunamu. Last year, Dunamu transferred its stake in Securities Plus to NAVER Financial, NAVER’s financial subsidiary. NAVER Financial and NAVER now hold 65.96% and 34.04% of NAVER Pay Unlisted, respectively.<\/p>\n

NAVER Financial is currently pursuing a merger that would bring Dunamu in as a wholly owned subsidiary. In other words, the unlisted Dunamu shares that NAVER Financial intends to acquire are trading on NAVER Pay Unlisted. That arrangement makes it difficult to avoid the criticism that an over-the-counter broker is brokering securities in which it holds an interest on a distribution platform it operates itself.<\/p>\n

Notably, Dunamu is the most heavily traded stock in the unlisted market. Trading in the unlisted stock market totaled 220.5 billion won ($150 million) through the 28th this year, of which Dunamu alone accounted for 117.3 billion won, or 53% of the total.<\/p>\n

On top of that, 99% of trading in Dunamu shares takes place on NAVER Pay Unlisted, because Dunamu has not applied to register its shares for trading on the Seoul Exchange platform. The gap in market share between NAVER Pay Unlisted and Seoul Exchange, once roughly 6 to 4, has widened to about 9 to 1, and the decisive factor has been whether each platform brokers Dunamu shares. The Fair Trade Commission is also reportedly investigating whether Dunamu’s arrangement limiting trading of its own shares to NAVER Pay Unlisted constitutes abuse of a market-dominant position.<\/p>\n

Last year, financial authorities announced a framework for regulating over-the-counter brokerage and set out the principle that issuance and distribution must be separated. If the entity that issues a financial investment product also operates the market where it is traded, unfair trading may occur.<\/p>\n

Regulators do allow issuers to combine issuance and distribution if certain conditions are met, including prior approval and subsequent reporting to the FSS and a ban on transactions with the securities issuer or its related parties. That is why observers expect a monopoly structure to harden if the external committee does not take issue with Dunamu shares trading on NAVER Pay Unlisted.<\/p>\n

An official in the financial investment industry said that establishing standards to prevent conflicts of interest is not enough on its own. “Guidelines alone have limits in curbing delayed disclosure of negative news or inflated volume through wash trading,” the official said. “Conditional approval \u2014 capping Dunamu’s trading value on NAVER Pay Unlisted at up to 30% of total trading value, for example \u2014 could be an alternative.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yonhap News South Korea’s financial authorities are beginning the review process to institutionalize over-the-counter exchanges for unlisted stocks,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":136756,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[623],"tags":[5083,1154,657,6441,69447,69446,69448,69445],"class_list":["post-136755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-naver","tag-dunamu","tag-financial-supervisory-service","tag-naver","tag-naver-financial","tag-naver-pay-unlisted","tag-over-the-counter-brokerage","tag-seoul-exchange","tag-unlisted-stock-market"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136755","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=136755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}