KOSPI · February 19, 1998

February, once the debt rollover was signed

+5.27%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

Korea's IMF crisis

near the end of it · 1997-06-17 → 1998-06-16, -64.66% over the whole period

What happened that day?

19 February 1998 — the KOSPI rose 5.27%. No single cause for that one day could be pinned down
It sat in the middle of a run that had started two sessions earlier and continued into the following week
At the end of January, foreign banks had agreed to convert Korea's short-term foreign debt into long-term. The deadline moved back
The urgent part of the crisis was not the amount owed but when it came due. Pushing that out bought air
A new government was due to take office at the end of February. How far restructuring would go was the daily news
This was not the recovery, though. The index fell further and hit its episode low in mid-June
From the late-October 1997 high to the June 1998 low the index fell 53.65%

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 put together from the public record; where a specific source was consulted it is listed above.