• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.191-202
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• 2017

KONEX (Korea New Exchange) is the organised stock exchange for small enterprises. It is a channel through which venture start-ups at their early stage can raise funds without a huge burden of debt. We explain the regulations in this market and examine the effects of major changes in the relevant regulations. The first change was replacing the call auction mechanism with the continuous auction mechanism. The change improved the information asymmetry among investors. The second was lowering the minimum deposit requirement for individual investors from 300 million won to 100 million won. As the result of the change, market liquidity increased a lot and the number of investors increased. The last change was introducing the small investment account. Although this raised the participation of individual investors but did not lead to the improvement in market liquidity or information asymmetry. In overall, encouraging more investors to participate in the transactions in KONEX is the fast way to boost the market, while the long-term strategy should focus more on improving the information asymmetry by helping information generating and transferring activities.