Repricing the Korea Discount

  • Korea
  • market structure
  • governance
  • Asia equities

Core claim

Korea's long-standing valuation discount may be repricing under governance reform, but the cross-sectional evidence requires separating genuine rerating from AI-semiconductor concentration effects.

Method

Original cross-sectional test: below-book versus above-book rerating across Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. Placebo windows and explicit robustness disclosure.

Why this matters

Headline narratives about "the end of the Korea discount" often conflate structural reform with sector concentration. The paper separates those channels.

Implication

Investors should treat Korea exposure as a market-structure question with testable sub-hypotheses, not a single thematic bet on governance alone.

Style note

Declarative section titles state findings rather than posing questions. Evidence leads; interpretation follows.