The South Korea Financial Services Commission (FSC) granted Nextrade final approval to operate an alternative trading system (ATS), paving the way for a multiple-venue, competition-based stock trading structure alongside the Korea Exchange (KRX) from 4 March 2025. Nextrade will run pre-market and after-market sessions (08:00–08:50 and 15:30–20:00), extending total daily trading hours to twelve, and plans to offer mid-point and stop-limit orders, with the KRX also set to support these order types by launch. To protect the integrity of the KRX opening and closing prices, Nextrade will suspend trading during the KRX’s opening and closing auctions; the KRX will also reduce the indicative opening price display window to 08:50–09:00 while maintaining the closing auction at 15:20–15:30. Nextrade expects execution fees to be 20 to 40 percent lower than current KRX fee levels. The integrated oversight model will require securities companies to comply with best execution and implement smart order routing in line with Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) guidelines issued in June 2024; short selling on Nextrade will be limited to the regular session (09:00–15:20), and the ATS will operate under the same price limits (±30 percent of the KRX closing price), market stabilisation tools, market surveillance, clearing and T+2 settlement arrangements as the KRX, with surveillance and clearing performed by the KRX. Nextrade will phase in tradable KRX-listed, highly liquid items over the first four weeks from 10 to 110 to 410 to 800, and from end-June 2025 will move to quarterly selections announced five trading days before each quarter-end and effective from the first trading day of the next quarter. The FSC also flagged further reform work, including a preliminary notice issued on 3 February to permit ATS trading in exchange traded funds and exchange traded notes and to subject ATS fees to deliberation by the market efficiency promotion committee.

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