KOSPI · June 16, 1998

Korea's IMF crisis

-64.66%

peak-to-trough, the whole slide

241 trading days · 1997-06-17 → 1998-06-16

back to the old high on 1999-04-27

What happened that day?

From the June 1997 peak to the June 1998 low the KOSPI fell 64.66% — 241 trading days
The setup was conglomerates that had grown on debt. Affiliates guaranteed each other's loans, so one failure pulled the rest down with it
From early 1997 big names like Hanbo and Kia went under one after another
The Asian currency crisis that began in Thailand spread, foreign money left, and Korea ran short of the dollars needed to defend the won
On 21 November 1997 the government asked the IMF for a bailout, agreed in early December. The conditions attached — high interest rates and restructuring — drove further corporate failures and unemployment
The bounce off the low was steep. The old high was back on 27 April 1999

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.