[Exclusive] Kim Sung-joo, Chairman of the National Pension Service: “Today’s KOSPI Decline Is a Short-Term Correction” (2026.05.15.)

(Those who have experienced

just how fearsome the stock market can be

do not, as a rule,

venture forecasts

about the stock market!)

Although the domestic stock market closed lower on the 15th, Kim Sung-joo, Chairman of the National Pension Service, leaned toward the possibility that it was a short-term correction.

Meeting with the Maeil Business Newspaper that day, Chairman Kim said of the KOSPI’s turn to decline, “Looking at the (price) chart, it has not fallen enormously.”

The KOSPI broke through the 8,000 mark for the first time in history early in the session that day, but profit-taking then poured in and it closed at 7,493.18 (–6.12%).

Chairman Kim noted, “What has risen (until now) is greater than what has fallen,” and “it is in a state of having risen, passing through a short-term correction, and rising again.”

The National Pension’s fund return this year is said already to be approaching 20%, on the strength of the domestic equity boom. With the KOSPI’s volatility widening, however, the return too is swinging day after day.

The biggest problem is that it is under pressure to sell some 150 trillion won of domestic equities.

The share of domestic equities in the National Pension’s total fund has recently climbed to about 27%. Since this year’s target is 14.9%, forced selling would be unavoidable if the suspension of rebalancing were lifted.

Chairman Kim confided, “There is much to weigh in a situation we have never experienced before.”

Jung Eun-kyeong, Minister of Health and Welfare and chair of the National Pension Fund Management Committee, also expressed concern that day, calling it “a situation in which various risk factors persist in financial markets and volatility is hard to predict.”

To resolve this problem, the Fund Management Committee discussed possible solutions that day, though it did not disclose the specific content of the discussion. A full decision is scheduled to be made at the Fund Management Committee on the 28th of this month.

It is highly unusual for the Fund Management Committee to be convened twice in a single month.

Chairman Kim added, “We are listening closely to market participants and experts,” and “we are weighing the matter while looking at cases in other countries and at our own past history.”

https://n.news.naver.com/article/009/0005680834?sid=101