Korean Job Discussion Forums

[HapKi]

I have Samsung Electronics, Hanaro, and KC Tech. The last two I bought on advice given in the Korean Herald. They used to have some kind of "Stock Watch" column 3 or 4 years ago. Yea, watch it go in the dumper. The Samsung's been good to me, though.
Anyone else put their money in the Korean stock market?

[kangnamdragon]

I own a few thousand shares of my company.

[chotaerang]

I held cheil jedang for a couple of years and it did well for me. Am now looking at Posco and trying to figure out why it selling at such a low PE. I've fished some analysis off of the board at the MotleyFool (asia section). Either of you guys found any useful, foriegn sources of info on the Kospi?

[Demophobe]

Yes. All in silicon.

[Son Deureo!]

How do you go about buying stock while you're in Korea? What are the taxes on dividends like? Are there any problems with trying to leave Korea with shares of Korean stock?

[bobbyhanlon]

son deureo.. i can't answer your second two questions, but for the first, try samsungfn.com - you'll have to visit one of their offices with your passport or some other id, and they'll set an account up right away. you can then login and just start trading. well, thats how simple it was for me. plus, they have english language screens. if you're good enough at korean to feel comfortable trading (which i'm not) then i've heard kiwoom.com is cheaper. generally though, commission costs are really low here, typically i pay 1000won per trade, which is much better than anything back home.

as for why posco has such a low p/e, i can only guess that this is partially related to the 'korea discount' (ie. low governance standards) and the fact that steel is a commodity (and therefore liable to wild swings in price). however it is well known that posco has the best governance standards among big korean companies, and its recent innovations should help keep it healthy even if steel does come down somewhat in the event of lower chinese demand. basically, my opinion (for what its worth) is that posco is the best mid-long term investment prospect on the korean market. also if you're patient, samsung corp. (�Ｚ����) is worth a look. its holdings in samsung electronics (�Ｚ����) alone are greater than its entire market cap, so you are essentially getting the company for free when you buy the stock. sadly the fact that the samsung directors run their companies as fiefdoms rather than real businesses means this value might not be realised for some time.

[gajackson1]

Eastel. check that one.

G.

[peemil]

I own a tupperware container of Kimchi. That's "Korean stock."