Foreign ownership of Korean stocks: 28 years of data

Updated September 2026 · Data through 1 September 2026

Foreign investors own roughly two-fifths of the KOSPI by value. That single number explains a lot about how the Korean market behaves: why a Federal Reserve meeting can move Seoul more than a domestic data release, why the won and the index tend to fall together, and why "foreigners sold today" is a front-page headline in Korea in a way it is nowhere else. This guide walks through the full history of the foreign ownership ratio since Korea opened its market, using the daily series published by the Korea Financial Investment Association (KOFIA).

What the ratio measures

KOFIA publishes, for every trading day, the market value of all shares held by foreign investors and the total market capitalisation of each market. The ownership ratio is simply the first divided by the second. It is a stock measure — how much foreigners hold — as opposed to the daily net purchase figures on this site, which are flows. The two are related but, as 2026 showed, they can move in opposite directions.

From 14% to 44%: the opening years

Korea admitted foreign portfolio investors in 1992 with a 10% ownership cap per company. The cap was raised in steps and abolished entirely in May 1998, in the middle of the Asian financial crisis. The KOFIA series starts in January 1998 with foreigners holding just 14.5% of the KOSPI, worth about ₩25 trillion on a market capitalised at ₩138 trillion.

What followed was one of the fastest foreign accumulations of any major market. The ratio passed 30% by the end of 2000, 40% in 2003, and peaked at 44.1% on 26 April 2004. Foreigners were buying restructured banks, Samsung Electronics, POSCO and the shipbuilders at single-digit price-to-earnings multiples while domestic investors, scarred by the crisis, stayed away.

2005–2008: the great rotation, then the crash

The ratio then fell for four straight years, to 32.4% at the end of 2007 and 28.7% at the end of 2008. Two different things were happening. In 2006 and 2007, Korean households poured money into domestic equity funds and foreigners took profits: net foreign selling on the KOSPI ran to about ₩9.5 trillion in 2006 and ₩24 trillion in 2007 in our data. Then in 2008 the global financial crisis forced another ₩28.5 trillion of selling, and the ratio bottomed at 27.7% on 14 April 2009 — the lowest reading since 2000.

2009–2019: the 30–38% band

The recovery was equally sharp. Foreigners bought a net ₩29 trillion of KOSPI stocks in 2009 and another ₩21 trillion in 2010, the two largest inflow years on record until then. From 2010 onward the ratio lived in a band between roughly 31% and 38%: rising with the semiconductor cycle (37.2% at the end of 2017, 38.2% at the end of 2019) and dipping with global risk episodes (2011, 2015–16, 2018).

2020–2022: the retail boom dilutes foreign share

Korea's pandemic-era retail boom was large enough to change the ownership structure. Domestic individuals bought a net ₩47 trillion of KOSPI stocks in 2020 and ₩65 trillion in 2021 while foreigners sold roughly ₩24 trillion in each year. The ratio fell from a 2020 high of 39.3% to 30.8% at the end of 2022, the lowest year-end level since 2008.

2023–2026: back above 40%

The ratio then rebuilt: 32.8% at the end of 2023, 36.3% at the end of 2025 (a year in which the KOSPI rose 76%), and 41.6% on 25 June 2026 — the highest reading since 2004. As of 1 September 2026 foreigners held ₩2,228 trillion of a ₩5,636 trillion KOSPI, or 39.5%.

* 2026 as of 1 September. Source: KOFIA daily market summary, KOSPI only.

The 2026 paradox: record selling, rising ownership

2026 is the year that separates the stock measure from the flow measure. Foreign investors were net sellers of KOSPI stocks in every month from January to August — about ₩199 trillion in our figures, which include both the main KRX board and the NXT alternative venue and therefore run higher than KRX-only headline numbers. Korean media reported a record ₩45–49 trillion of net selling in each of May and June alone. Yet the ownership ratio rose more than three percentage points over the same period.

The explanation is arithmetic. Foreigners are concentrated in Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, and those two stocks accounted for the bulk of both the index's gain and the foreign selling. Selling a few percent of a position whose price has doubled still leaves you holding far more value than before. Ownership ratios follow prices first and flows second.

KOSDAQ is a different market

Everything above is about the KOSPI. On the KOSDAQ, Korea's growth and small-cap board, foreign ownership has never been high: 6.8% at the end of 2000, a peak of 17.3% at the end of 2007, and between 8% and 12% for most of the last fifteen years (11.7% at the latest reading). Foreign influence on Korean equities is overwhelmingly a large-cap, KOSPI phenomenon; KOSDAQ is a retail market.

How to use the ratio

• It is a slow positioning gauge, not a timing tool. Both historical peaks (2004, 2026) came after multi-year rallies, and both troughs (2009, 2022) preceded strong foreign inflows. But the ratio spent years near its highs in the late 2010s without a reversal.
• Combine it with the daily flows. A high ownership ratio plus persistent net selling (2026) describes a market where foreign positioning is being reduced at the margin even as it looks large in aggregate. See Do foreign investors move the KOSPI? for what the daily flows do and do not predict.
• Check which stocks. Aggregate ratios hide that foreign ownership is 50%-plus in some large caps and near zero in many small caps. The per-stock flow history on each stock page is the practical view.

Net purchase figures are from Korea Exchange investor statistics as processed by our pipeline and cover currently listed common and preferred shares. This article is general information, not investment advice.