Korean Stock & Equity Research

Korean Equities/Dividend & Value-up

As Korea's largest single institutional shareholder across many major listed companies, the National Pension Service's own stewardship code — its formal framework for how it votes shares and engages with management — carries outsized influence on whether Value-Up commitments translate into actual boardroom decisions, separate from the legal reforms covered elsewhere in this guide. This article i..

Korean Equities/Dividend & Value-up

A company's payout ratio (dividends paid as a share of net income) and its dividend coverage by free cash flow, not the headline dividend growth number, are the two figures that determine whether a Value-Up dividend commitment can actually hold up through a weaker earnings year. This article is part of our Top High-Dividend Korean Stocks & Corporate Value-Up Strategy guide. Why Isn't Dividend Gr..

Korean Equities/Dividend & Value-up

Many Korean conglomerates historically used circular or cross-shareholding structures — where affiliate A owns shares in affiliate B, which owns shares in affiliate C, which owns shares back in affiliate A — allowing founding families to retain effective control with a relatively small direct ownership stake, a structure that has historically weakened the influence of ordinary minority sharehold..

Korean Equities/Dividend & Value-up

For investors who want exposure to Korea's dividend and Value-Up theme without researching individual banks and industrials one by one, Korea-listed ETFs like the Hanwha ARIRANG High Dividend ETF (161510) — tracking the FnGuide High Dividend Index across companies of all market caps — offer basket-level exposure, though flow data shows these domestic products have recently lost ground to US divi..

Korean Equities/Dividend & Value-up

The Korea Value-Up Index, launched by KRX in September 2024, screens roughly 100 KOSPI and KOSDAQ companies against five criteria: top-400 market capitalization, two consecutive profitable years, consistent shareholder returns, above-median price-to-book ratio, and strong return on equity — and the current constituent list is published directly by KRX, making replication straightforward even wit..

Korean Equities/Dividend & Value-up

POSCO Holdings, the group's parent company, faces a structurally harder dividend story than POSCO International, its trading and energy affiliate — steelmaking is capital-intensive and cyclical, tying dividend sustainability closely to global steel pricing and Chinese oversupply dynamics, while POSCO International's more diversified trading and LNG business has supported steadier distributions. ..

Korean Equities/Dividend & Value-up

Korean preferred shares (우선주) typically carry no voting rights but receive a small fixed additional dividend over common shares — usually just tens to a few hundred Won per share annually — and because they usually trade at a meaningful discount to the common share price, that fixed extra dividend translates into a noticeably higher percentage yield. This article is part of our Top High-Dividend..

Korean Equities/Dividend & Value-up

Since July 22, 2025, Korean directors have owed a fiduciary duty directly to shareholders, not just to the company itself — a change to Article 382-3 of the Korean Commercial Code that gives the Value-Up Program's shareholder-protection goals actual legal backing for the first time. The amendment passed the National Assembly on July 3, 2025, following an earlier presidential veto in April, and w..