KOSPI · April 7, 2003

The day the war looked like ending soon

+5.00%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

Thirteen months as China started buying

early in it · 2003-03-17 → 2004-04-23, +81.67% over the whole period

What happened that day?

The KOSPI rose 5% on the day
Coalition forces were reported advancing quickly on Baghdad, tilting opinion toward a war that would not drag on
The route by which war reached Korea was the oil price. A country importing all of its crude sees both its trade balance and its inflation worsen when oil rises
A quick end means steadier oil and released corporate investment
17 March had been the bottom of this phase, and the advance that began there ran to April of the following year
What actually drove that advance, though, was China rather than the war. This was when China began buying Korean intermediate goods in volume to build out capacity

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.