The paperwork comes first
A company going public in Korea files a registration statement with the Financial Services Commission, published on DART. It carries the shares on offer, the indicative price range, the subscription and payment dates, the underwriters and what the money will be used for. After institutional book-building the company files a finalized-terms version with the confirmed offer price. Our Korea IPO calendar reads those filings every three hours.
Book-building sets the price
Institutions bid first. The demand ratio (shares bid divided by shares allocated) and the share of bid volume committed to a lock-up appear in the finalized-terms filing, together with where in the indicative range the price landed. High demand does not predict the listing-day move, but a price set above the range and heavy lock-up commitments show how institutions saw the deal. We collect these on Korea IPO demand results.
Check how much stock can actually trade
Korean filings include a table showing the share of listed stock that is tradable on day one, and how that rises after one, three, six and twelve months as lock-ups expire. A small day-one float limits early selling; the months where the ratio jumps are when supply arrives. We read that table for every IPO and put the expiry dates on the market calendar.
Retail subscription: two business days, cash up front
Retail orders run for two business days through the underwriting brokers. Orders normally require 50% of the order value in cash, held until the refund date. Money for shares you did not receive is returned on the payment (refund) date, usually two business days after the book closes.
Equal and pro-rata allocation
At least half of the retail tranche is divided equally among everyone who orders the minimum quantity, however large their order. The rest is allocated in proportion to order size. That is why small orders still receive shares in Korea, and why the pro-rata ratio published after the close matters for large orders.
Who can take part
Subscriptions run through Korean brokerage accounts, so a foreign investor needs an account with one of the underwriting brokers. Non-residents open one through a standing proxy or custodian; the separate foreign investor registration certificate was abolished at the end of 2023 and replaced by registration with a legal entity identifier or passport number. You cannot subscribe to the same IPO at two brokers, and rules on account age and per-person limits differ by broker.
Listing day and the price band
The issuance result report filed after the subscription names the scheduled first trading day. On that day a Korean IPO may trade between 60% and 400% of the offer price, a range introduced in June 2023 so the price can find its level on day one instead of hitting repeated limit moves.
What we publish
For every Korean IPO we compile the schedule, offer price, underwriters, institutional demand ratio, lock-up commitments, day-one float with its expiry steps, retail subscription ratio, shares per account under equal allocation and the scheduled listing day — all from DART filings, with a link to the original document beside each figure.
This is an explanation of rules and procedure, not investment advice. Rules reflect September 2026 and can change; check the filing and your broker before acting. Corrections: contact us.