South Korea halts stock trading as Kospi plunges more than 8%

Jul 29, 2026
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Closing figures are displayed at a KB Kookmin Bank trading room in Seoul on Tuesday after the Kospi briefly fell below 6,000. The Kospi closed at 6,023.66, down 732.09 points, or 10.84%, while the Kosdaq ended at 705.85, down 59.01 points, or 7.72%. The won closed at 1,462.50 against the U.S. dollar. Photo by Asia Today

July 28 (Asia Today) — South Korea temporarily halted trading on its main stock market Tuesday after the benchmark Kospi plunged more than 8%.

The Korea Exchange activated a circuit breaker at 10:13 a.m., suspending trading on the main KOSPI market for 20 minutes.

The circuit breaker is triggered when the Kospi falls at least 8% from the previous session and remains at that level for one minute.

The decline accelerated as major semiconductor stocks suffered steep losses.

Samsung Electronics was trading at 230,000 won ($156.59), down 9.45% from the previous session, when the circuit breaker was activated.

SK hynix fell 11.01% to 1.616 million won ($1,100.21).

The Kospi stood at 6,212.06, down 8.04%, when trading was halted. The index had fallen below the 6,500 level earlier in the session.

Foreign investors sold a net 1.763 trillion won ($1.20 billion) in shares, while institutional investors sold a net 189.9 billion won ($129.3 million).

Individual investors were net buyers of 1.961 trillion won ($1.34 billion).

— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

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Original Korean report: https://www.asiatoday.co.kr/kn/view.php?key=20260728010010088

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