Official Free Data Sources: KRX Marketdata, DART API, and BOK ECOS
KRX Marketdata
data.krx.co.kr is KRX's own free market-data portal: historical and end-of-day prices, index levels and constituents, short-selling balance/volume statistics, and market statistics, generally downloadable without payment (some datasets require free registration). It is the most authoritative free source for KOSPI/KOSDAQ price and index data.
DART / OpenDART
Covered in more detail on the DART disclosures page: dart.fss.or.kr for human-readable filings, and opendart.fss.or.kr for a free, registration-based API to pull filing metadata and financial statement data programmatically.
BOK ECOS
The Bank of Korea's ECOS (Economic Statistics System, ecos.bok.or.kr) is the free, authoritative source for Korean macroeconomic and financial statistics: interest rates, KRW exchange rates, monetary aggregates, balance of payments, and more, with an API available for programmatic queries. It is the natural companion to KRX/DART data when the question is macro rather than company-specific.
Practical notes for builders
- All three sources above are genuinely free at the point of use; registration (email-based, no payment) is typically required for API keys (OpenDART, ECOS).
- Rate limits and daily quotas exist on the APIs and are not always documented in English at the same depth as the Korean docs — budget extra time for trial and error if you are building against them.
- None of these sources publish a stable, versioned "English API" guarantee — field names and response formats can change without much advance notice, so defensive parsing is worth the effort.
Frequently asked questions
- Is there a free, official source for KOSPI/KOSDAQ historical price data?
- Yes, KRX Marketdata (data.krx.co.kr) is the exchange's own free portal for historical prices, index data, and short-selling statistics.
- What's the best free source for Korean macro data like interest rates and FX?
- The Bank of Korea's ECOS system (ecos.bok.or.kr), which is free and has an API for programmatic access.