KOSPI · November 24, 1997
Korea's IMF Crisis
-10.95%
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?
- 24 November 1997 — KOSPI fell 10.95%, days after Korea formally requested an IMF bailout
- The same day a century-old Japanese securities house closed its doors. It meant this was not Korea's problem alone — funding across Asia was drying up at once
- Foreign reserves had run down to the point where the won couldn't be defended
- Short-term foreign debt was coming due, with no dollars to pay it and nobody willing to roll it over
- The rescue came with conditions — high rates and forced restructuring, meaning corporate failures and mass unemployment
- What the market priced wasn't the support but what its terms implied
- Fell 55.14% from peak — deeper than any US episode on this list
- Recovery was fast too: within two years the index had retraced much of it
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.