Andrew Lee

Interactive Brokers opened direct Korea Exchange trading in May 2026, and the account side is genuinely easy: an existing client switches on a permission, and most new applications clear within a business day. The part nobody mentions is that your dividend rate turns on a Korean application form, that the W-8BEN you signed does nothing about it, and that we could not establish whether the broker lodges it for you. We set out the costs, the fund trap the route opens for American holders, and the question to put in writing before your first dividend.

Korean equities trade at 52 per cent of the developed-market price-to-book ratio, and that figure comes from the Korean government rather than from a foreign broker. The Financial Services Commission also published its own three causes: governance, industrial structure and weak shareholder returns. We set out what a comparison across 45 countries and 32,000 companies actually measures, why one of the three official causes is also a defect in the measuring instrument, and what would have to happen before anyone could call the discount closed.

Mandatory English disclosure reaches 265 Korean companies from May 2026 and 848 from March 2027, and yet many English filings on DART carry no figures at all. The Financial Supervisory Service publishes them voluntarily, disclaims responsibility for the contents, and points readers to KIND, the Korea Exchange system, for the original. We set out which regulator owns which filing, what the English page reliably tells you, and how to reach the document you actually want.

Korea deducts 22 per cent from a non-resident’s dividend by default. The treaty rate applies only if a form reaches the withholding agent before payment, and that form lapses after three years. Sourced to the Personal Income Tax Act and the NTS form itself.