The world's best performing South Korean stock market is still not a developed market, Ming Sheng CEO reveals the reason: Korean won trading restrictions On June 25th, after MSCI maintained its classification of emerging markets in South Korea, its CEO Henry Fernandez said, "The operating mechanism of the South Korean stock market still exhibits many characteristics of emerging markets." A key issue hindering the country's classification upgrade is the trading restrictions imposed on the Korean won. When you want to buy and sell stocks in any developed market such as the UK, France, Germany, Japan, or the US, you must first buy the currency of that country before buying stocks, and when selling stocks, you must also sell the currency. And you want to be able to trade in London, New York, Frankfurt, Tokyo, or other places at your convenience... but in Korea, you cannot do this