Kiwoom Lists Venture-Capital ETN as KOSDAQ Clears Three More IPO Hopefuls

The Korea Exchange saw movement at both ends of its listing pipeline on August 20: Kiwoom Securities brought a new exchange-traded note focused on venture capital and startup investment to the main KOSPI board, while the exchange’s KOSDAQ division approved preliminary listing reviews for three companies — T&E Korea, Ucast, and Elice Group — and drone-inspection firm Nearthlab advanced to a new listing of its own. Together, the day’s actions add fresh product and fresh issuers to a market that has been expanding rapidly in both size and global standing.

A Brokerage Packages Venture Capital for Retail Buyers

Kiwoom Securities said on August 20 that it is newly listing the “Kiwoom Venture Capital Startup Investment ETN” on the Korea Exchange’s KOSPI market. An exchange-traded note is a debt instrument issued by a securities firm that tracks an underlying index, and it trades on the exchange like a stock — a structure that lets ordinary investors take exposure to asset classes, in this case venture-stage investment, that are normally hard to access directly.

The issuer itself has roots in Korea’s first internet-brokerage wave. Kiwoom was created in January 2000 by Daou Technology as an online stock-trading service, and Daou still held a 47.7% ownership stake in the brokerage as of the close of fiscal 2017. Daou, founded in 1986 and listed on the Korea Stock Exchange in 1997, remains the anchor of the group behind the firm.

Three Approvals and One Debut in the KOSDAQ Queue

On the same day, the Korea Exchange’s KOSDAQ Market Division said it had approved the preliminary listing reviews of three companies: T&E Korea, Ucast, and Elice Group. Preliminary review approval is the gate that stands before a public offering — companies that clear it can move on to filing their registration statements and pricing their deals, typically within months.

Separately, Nearthlab proceeded to a new listing on the KOSDAQ, converting an earlier approval into an actual market debut. The combination — one company arriving as three more enter the queue — is a snapshot of a KOSDAQ pipeline that continues to replenish itself.

Housekeeping on the Junior Board: Two Halts Lifted, One Imposed

Beyond the new arrivals, the KOSDAQ Market Division filed a cluster of administrative actions with the Financial Supervisory Service’s DART disclosure system the same day. Trading suspensions were lifted for TN Entertainment, whose shares returned to trading following a change-of-listing tied to a reverse stock split, and for Hanul & Jeju, which relisted after a stock split.

The division moved in the opposite direction on Parataxis Korea, suspending trading in the company’s shares for investor protection and separately announcing that a delisting-related liquidation sale of the stock had been put on hold. Suspensions of this kind freeze trading while the exchange works through questions about a company’s status, and the hold on the liquidation sale keeps the final step of a delisting in abeyance until those questions are resolved.

The Market These Issuers Are Joining

The companies clearing review this week are entering a market at a historic high-water mark. The Korea Exchange — formed when the Korea Stock Exchange, the Korea Futures Exchange, and the KOSDAQ market were merged under a single statute — counted 2,901 listed companies as of January 2026, with total market capitalization of roughly 4,277 trillion won, about $2.95 trillion. A rally driven by artificial-intelligence stocks then pushed the Korean equity market to a valuation near $5 trillion in June 2026, making it the world’s sixth-largest by market capitalization.

That backdrop cuts both ways for the day’s news. A record market makes public listings more attractive for issuers like Nearthlab and the three newly approved candidates, and it deepens the pool of retail money that products like Kiwoom’s venture-capital ETN are designed to capture. The exchange’s parallel enforcement actions — suspending one stock for investor protection even as it welcomes new ones — are a reminder that the junior board’s growth comes with active policing of who stays on it.