KOSPI · October 27, 1997
The day the Asian crisis spread
-7.08%
single-day change vs previous close
Part of a longer stretch
Korea's IMF crisis
midway through · 1997-06-17 → 1998-06-16, -64.66% over the whole period
What happened that day?
- On 27 October 1997 the KOSPI fell 7.08% in a single day
- The crisis that began with the Thai baht's collapse in July was spreading across Asia
- In late October the Hong Kong market fell sharply and the whole region went with it
- Investors treated emerging Asia as one block and sold indiscriminately, without sorting country by country
- Korea was already more fragile, with large corporate failures piling up
- Six weeks later the government would ask the IMF for a bailout
Sources
Every figure on this page is recomputed from the original daily closing prices and checked against them at build time. The account of what happened is written from the sources listed above.