Asian stock markets have seen mixed results under the backdrop of a strong US dollar this year. Some have achieved a bull market in their local currency stocks at the cost of currency depreciation, while others have sacrificed some of their stock market gains for relatively stable exchange rates. Only South Korea is a special case.

Measured in Korean won, the KOSPI index has fallen by 10.0% year-to-date, and after taking into account the depreciation of the won, the KOSPI measured in US dollars has fallen by 18.9%, making it the weakest in Asia. From the perspective of capital flows, since the second half of this year, only institutions in South Korea have maintained a net buying scale of the stock market, while the residential sector has been continuously reducing its purchases.

Analysis shows that a large proportion of the money that South Korean residents have withdrawn from the stock market has gone into "speculating on coins". According to data from the Bank of Korea (BOK) as of November, the number of domestic cryptocurrency investors in South Korea has reached 15.59 million, an increase of 610,000 from the previous month. Currently, 30% of South Korea's 51 million citizens are speculating on coins. The daily trading volume of the top five cryptocurrency exchanges in South Korea, UPbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit, and GOPAX, has increased from 3.4 trillion won in October to 14.9 trillion won in November, more than four times the growth. South Koreans have always been enthusiastic about investing in cryptocurrencies. In the first wave of the cryptocurrency bull market in 2017, about 5% of the population participated, while in the second wave in 2021, 10% participated. Now, this proportion has expanded to 30%. However, historically, the Korean stock index and bitcoin prices have been positively correlated overall, until this positive correlation was completely broken in October of this year.