Financial statements to be published in English to woo foreign investors

English website of the official financial disclosure run by the Financial Supervisory Service [SCREEN CAPTURE]

All financial statements filed on the official financial disclosure site will be made available in English for foreign investors as the financial regulator focuses on improving convenience.

Effective from Monday, a function that offers automatic English translation of the Korean language disclosures will be updated on the English website of DART, or Data Analysis, Retrieval and Transfer System, run by the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS).

Although the DART's English website (englishdart.fss.or.kr) has been running since 2007, foreigners could only access English disclosures that listed companies had voluntarily uploaded.

The enhancement will allow foreign investors to access in real-time the consolidated English financial statements and reports in the format of eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), or the international standard of digital business reporting.

After the update, investors can also look up information about companies that are not publicly listed that have uploaded information on DART. Before, English information was limited to companies listed on Kospi or Kosdaq.

The system, in part, aims to end the “Korea discount”, or a tendency for Korean companies to have lower valuations than global peers.

“We hope to resolve the prior lack of information foreign investors had so that they can now instantly check and analyze the financial disclosures in English once a company uploads them in DART,” the financial regulator said.

Providing the filings in the XBRL format will allow foreigners to easily compare Korean companies’ financial situation with global corporations, FSS explained.

The English service will continue to be updated in the future. Some of the upcoming changes include options to automatically translate the company’s legal disclosures into English and to integrate the English website of DART with the English website of the Korea Exchange.

From 2024, Kospi-listed companies whose total asset exceeds 10 trillion won ($7.8 billion) will have to upload English disclosures within three working days after they upload the information in Korean.

BY LEE JAE-LIM [lee.jaelim@joongang.co.kr]