Gov't to tackle 'Korea Discount' with more English financial disclosures

The Financial Supervisory Service is expanding its English financial disclosures to better attract foreign investors and address undervaluation of the country's stocks.

The English website of the official financial disclosure run by the Financial Supervisory Service [SCREEN CAPTURE]

The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) will expand the English disclosure of its financial data to attract more foreign investors and tackle the so-called “Korea Discount,” or undervaluation of the country’s stocks.

The FSS said Sunday that it will upgrade its English DART, or Data Analysis, Retrieval and Transfer System, to offer English translations for index, format items and optional input values for all statutory disclosures, including business reports, this year.

This is the second phase of its update; the agency already offers part of the DART service in English including company names, report titles and the names of attached files.

Searching the data will become easier as the upgraded system will enable users to search for information not only with the company name, but also with the report name.

FSS also plans to establish English Open DART, a dedicated service for analyzing and utilizing 83 key disclosure data.

“The FSS is expecting that these improvements will widen the range of information provisions and make it possible for foreign investors to collect and analyze a large volume of data in real time,” it said.

“The upgrades will give foreign investors better access to disclosure data, contribute to improving the financing conditions of domestic companies and eventually help to solve Korea discount problem.”

The upgrade and new service will be available within the year.

BY SARAH CHEA [chea.sarah@joongang.co.kr]