Seoul: The Korea Exchange (KRX), the operator of South Korea's primary stock exchange, announced on Tuesday that a brief suspension of trading activities for companies listed on the main bourse was attributed to a technical glitch. This issue arose from errors in the calculation of excessive quotations related to a specific company.
According to Yonhap News Agency, the trading halt affected the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) market, where trading was paused for 7 minutes from 11:37 a.m. to 11:44 a.m. This incident marked the first time since 2005 that all KOSPI-listed shares experienced a complete trading halt.
The KRX identified that excessive bids for Dong Yang Steel Pipe were responsible for causing the malfunction of the entire trading system. As a preventive measure, the bourse operator has committed to weekly checks on the trading system of Nextrade (NXT), the country's first alternative stock exchange. This action comes in anticipation of the number of stocks traded on the NXT increasing to 800 this month.