Published on 18 Aug 2023 on Insider Monkey via Yahoo Finance

10 Korean Stocks Listed in the U.S.

In this piece, we will take a look at the ten Korean stocks listed in the U.S. If you want to skip our introduction to Korean businesses and want to jump ahead to the top five stocks in this list, then check out 5 Korean Stocks Listed in the U.S.

South Korea, officially known as the Republic of Korea, is one of the largest economies in the world. It had a gross domestic product (GDP) of $1.65 trillion in nominal terms as of 2022, making it the 13th biggest economy in the world. And while some countries, like the U.K. or the U.S., have had large economies for decades, South Korea, like India has only recently risen to economic prosperity.

In fact, Korean economic history before the paradigm shift in its economy is typical of a third world country. Ruled by its military for much of its history after the partition of the Korean peninsula, South Korea suffered from corruption and poor governance as its civil service was put in place by the Japanese during their colonization. After the second world war, America was the biggest aid provider to South Korea, often accounting for as much as 80% of the country's total finances and the money that its government needed to run. South Korea also kept its currency highly overvalued, a typical occurrence in third world countries. This provided little incentives for Korean firms to export and also provided the local population with cheap imported products that were subsidized by the government. At the same time, government corruption and cronyism lead to government officials channeling aid dollars to themselves, by providing import licenses to their preferred businessmen.