WhyItDropped

KOSPI · January 12, 1998

Debt talks make progress

+10.19%

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 12 January 1998 the KOSPI rose 10.19% in a single day
  • Korea's most urgent problem was short-term foreign debt coming due, with no dollars to repay it
  • Negotiations with international banks to push out the maturities were under way, and word came that they were going well
  • Rolling the maturities meant not having to find dollars immediately, which cut default risk sharply
  • The exchange rate steadied and foreign buying appeared
  • The recovery was not smooth, though. Corporate failures continued and the low did not come until June

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.