South Korea is Courting Foreign Issuers

South Korea's Financial Supervisory Service rolled out its DART system in English at the first of the month. DART stands for "Data Analysis, Retrieval and Transfer System." Like EDGAR, the system is a repository for corporate filings. Issuers can be searched by name, and users can also review recent filings. The DART home page is available here.

South Korea also recently issued disclosure guidelines for foreign issuers. Those guidelines are available here. The Financial Supervisory Service says that it issued the guidelines because of recent increased interest of foreign companies in issuing stock or listing in Korea. To facilitate registration of foreign issuers, the FSS is also rolling out an electronic registration system.

It looks as if South Korea is effectively facilitating the capital flight predicted in the recent Interim Report of the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation.