SeoulMarkets · tag
commodities
5 stories tagged “commodities”, each from official Korean data with its source and timestamp.
Korea's exchange prices the same gold twice. The retail bar is not the dearer one.
KRX lists 99.99% gold in two sizes: a 1kg bar and a 100g mini. Over 49 sessions the mini closed higher by a median of 0.015 percent — and it closed lower on 22 of them. On five days the two moved in opposite directions.
We measured Korea's two oil prices in August. Ten weeks later the kerosene auction is almost gone.
Our August count put the kerosene auction dark one day in six across six years. Over the 49 sessions to 9 September it was dark 47 times — and petrol and diesel have tripled their own dark rate.
Korea's import bill rose 18% — but rubber jumped 96% and sugar fell 12%
Korea's won-priced import index rose 18.4% over the year to July 2026 — on average. Behind it: synthetic rubber +96% and fuels near +77%, while sugar and dairy fell. The won moved everything alike; the spread is the goods.
Diesel is draining off Korea's oil exchange — and the gap between its two order books isn't a spread
Diesel traded on the KRX oil market fell 23% from 2020 to 2025 while petrol held. And the 'premium' on its negotiated book over its competitive one is a few tenths of a percent that flips sign four days in ten. Not advice.
Korean gold fell 31%. Trading in it went up, not down.
Korea Exchange gold peaked on 29 January and is down 30.9% since. Turnover in the small, retail-sized 100-gram contract is running 72.3% above 2025's daily average through the whole decline — the fall drew more small buyers in, not fewer.