Who we are, and how we handle numbers

The publication

SMarkets covers Korean equities, commodities and macroeconomics for readers outside Korea. Korean market data is abundant but almost entirely published in Korean, on a delay, and in formats built for domestic regulatory use rather than for reading. We take the official releases, translate the substance rather than just the words, and say plainly what each figure does and does not support.

We cover the Korean financial markets as a whole — Equities, FX, Rates, Commodities, Funds, Macro — because they do not move independently of each other. A move in the won shows up in exporter earnings; a shift in the policy rate shows up in bank margins and in the bond curve before it shows up in the equity index. Splitting those into unconnected beats makes the coverage worse.

Futures and options are covered inside the market they derive from rather than as a separate section: KOSPI 200 derivatives under Equities, currency futures under FX, treasury-bond futures under Rates.

We do not publish price targets, trade ideas, or sponsored content.

Where the data comes from

Every figure we publish originates from a government or central-bank open-data release that permits redistribution. In practice that means:

• Equities, indices and securitized products — Financial Services Commission open APIs distributed through the Korea Public Data Portal, published under an unrestricted use licence.
• Bonds and yields — Financial Services Commission bond price data covering the treasury, general and small-denomination bond markets.
• Futures and options — Financial Services Commission derivatives price data.
• Exchange rates — Export-Import Bank of Korea published rates, and Bank of Korea currency statistics.
• Commodities — Financial Services Commission general-commodity price data for the petroleum, gold and emissions markets.
• Macroeconomic series — Bank of Korea statistics, accessed through the Public Data Portal and the Economic Statistics System.
• Listing and issuance reference data — Financial Services Commission listed-securities datasets.

One market we do not cover is domestic cryptocurrency trading. Korean exchange volumes are large enough to deserve coverage, but no government open-data feed publishes them, and exchange APIs carry redistribution terms we have not cleared. We would rather leave a visible gap than source a section we cannot stand behind.

We do not scrape the Korea Exchange website, and we do not redistribute licensed vendor feeds. SMarkets is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or licensed by the Korea Exchange.

Why our numbers are not live

Korean government open-data feeds settle on a one-business-day lag: a session's figures become available from about 1 p.m. the following business day, and Friday's data arrives the next Monday. We could not publish intraday prices from these sources even if we wanted to, so we do not pretend otherwise.

Every article carries an explicit data as-of timestamp in both Korean and US Eastern time, on the article card and again in the article itself. If a figure you read here is a day behind the live market, that is by design and the timestamp will say so.

How each article is verified

Articles are drafted with AI assistance from structured data pulls, then reviewed by a human editor before publication. The editor checks three things: that every quoted number traces back to a named source and dataset, that the as-of timestamp matches the actual release, and that any figure which could not be confirmed has been removed rather than softened.

The Data & Verification Notes block at the foot of every article is generated from the article's own source metadata. It lists the exact agency and API used, what was cross-checked, and — importantly — what we excluded because it could not be verified. If that block is missing, the article does not build.

Corrections

If a figure here is wrong, we want to know. Write to intelligentsiatv@gmail.com. Substantive corrections are made in place with a visible updated date; we do not quietly rewrite published numbers.

Advertising and independence

SMarkets is free to read and funded by display advertising. Advertisers have no involvement in, or advance sight of, editorial decisions. We do not accept paid placements, sponsored articles, or coverage-for-payment arrangements of any kind.

Not investment advice

SMarkets publishes data journalism for general information only. Nothing here is investment advice, a recommendation, or an offer to buy or sell any security — any investment you make is at your own risk and responsibility. Figures are derived from official public data sources and may be revised by the issuing agency. Verify independently before acting.

Publisher

Beomjin Academy (범진아카데미)
Proprietor: Park In-taek
159 Chunghyeon-ro, Jochiwon-eup, Sejong, Republic of Korea
Business registration number 233-06-03536
intelligentsiatv@gmail.com