In Korea, the earnings number that moves a stock is almost never the audited one. Voluntary preliminary releases — jamjeong siljeok, often just two line items — land weeks before the statutory quarterly report, and by the time the full filing arrives on DART within its roughly 45-day deadline, the market has usually repriced and moved on. Learning to distinguish the four filing types on DART, and to know which numbers in each are reviewed, audited, or neither, is the single highest-leverage skill for following Korean earnings season.
The topic is timely for a reason: the third-quarter preliminary-results window is approaching for Korea’s largest names, and the market has settled into a holding pattern ahead of the prints — the KOSPI last closed at 7,003.74 on October 2, 2026, sitting just above the 7,000 line, while foreign flow data (covered in the worked example below) shows selling pressure fading session by session into the earnings window. That wait-and-see tension ahead of a season’s first preliminary filings is a recurring feature of every Korean earnings season, which is exactly why the mechanics below are worth learning once, properly.
The four filing types at a glance
Everything below lives on DART (Data Analysis, Retrieval and Transfer system), the electronic disclosure platform run by the Financial Supervisory Service. Every listed company’s filings are public and free. The four documents you will encounter each season:
| Filing | Romanized term | Typical timing | Audit status | What it contains |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Preliminary earnings | jamjeong siljeok | Days to ~2 weeks after quarter-end (voluntary) | None — unaudited, unreviewed | Usually consolidated revenue and operating profit only |
| Quarterly report | bungi bogoseo | Within roughly 45 days of Q1/Q3 end (statutory) | Auditor-reviewed (lighter than an audit) | Full financial statements, segment data, notes |
| Semiannual report | bangi bogoseo | Within roughly 45 days of first-half end (statutory) | Auditor-reviewed | Full first-half statements and notes |
| Annual report | saeop bogoseo | Within roughly 90 days of fiscal year-end (statutory) | Fully audited, with auditor’s opinion | Audited statements, governance, shareholdings, full notes |
Corrections — jeongjeong filings — are a fifth category that can attach to any of the above, covered in their own section below.
Preliminary results (jamjeong): fast, thin, and unaudited
The preliminary release is voluntary. There is no statute requiring it; large companies — Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics most famously — publish one in the first week or so after quarter-end because the market demands it. Three properties matter:
- It is thin. A typical jamjeong release contains consolidated revenue and operating profit, and nothing else. No net profit, no segment breakdown, no balance sheet. Divisional detail arrives only with the full statutory report or the company’s own earnings call weeks later.
- It is unaudited and revisable. The figures carry an explicit disclaimer that they may change in the final filing. Revisions at the operating line are usually small, but they happen — treat the jamjeong number as a strong estimate, not a fact.
- It files under fair disclosure. On DART these appear in the ad-hoc/fair-disclosure (gongjeong gongsi) stream, not under periodic reports. If you filter DART by “periodic reports” only, you will miss every preliminary release of the season.
A practical consequence: the gap between a company’s jamjeong operating profit and its eventual reported net profit is where surprises hide. Impairments, provisions, and other below-the-line items are finalized only in the reviewed or audited statements. A clean preliminary print does not rule out an ugly bottom line 40 days later.
Periodic reports: the 45-day and 90-day clocks
Under Korea’s Capital Markets Act, listed companies must file quarterly and semiannual reports within roughly 45 days of the period’s end, and the annual report within roughly 90 days of fiscal year-end. Because the vast majority of Korean listed companies use a December fiscal year, this creates a predictable rhythm:
- Mid-May: Q1 reports cluster near the 45-day deadline.
- Mid-August: semiannual reports.
- Mid-November: Q3 reports.
- Late March: audited annual reports, arriving alongside the annual general meeting season. The separate audit report (gamsa bogoseo) typically appears shortly before the AGM.
Two reading habits pay off here. First, check the audit status line: quarterly and semiannual statements are “reviewed” by the auditor — a limited-assurance procedure — while only the annual statements receive a full audit and a formal opinion. An unqualified (“clean”) opinion is the norm; a qualified opinion, disclaimer, or adverse opinion is a serious event that can trigger a trading suspension and delisting review on the KRX. Second, check consolidated versus separate statements. Korean filings present both; consolidated figures are what analysts and index providers use, and mixing the two is the most common rookie error when pulling numbers from a filing by hand.
Deadlines are enforced. A company that fails to file on time without an approved extension can be designated an administrative issue, and prolonged failure escalates toward delisting review. A deadline slip is therefore itself a signal, not an administrative footnote.
Corrections (jeongjeong): read the reason, not just the headline
Any filing can be amended. On DART, amended documents carry a correction prefix in the filing title, and the system lets you open both the original and the corrected version side by side. The skill is triage:
- Routine corrections — a typo, a re-attached exhibit, a formatting fix — are common and meaningless.
- Numerical corrections to financial statements, especially to a periodic report after the auditor has reviewed it, deserve attention. Open the correction, find the stated reason, and compare the changed figures line by line.
- Corrections that follow regulator contact or restate prior-period numbers are the red-flag tier. Restatements in Korea, as anywhere, correlate with governance problems.
A useful habit: when screening a company you do not know, search its DART history for correction filings over the past few years. A clean history is weak evidence of nothing; a dense correction history is strong evidence of something.
Worked example: reading the tape around an earnings print
Earnings season is also when positioning data is most informative, so here is a real figure and how to read it. Korean flow data is published in units of eok won — 100 million won — so the first step is always unit conversion.
As of October 2, 2026, foreign investors’ net flow on the KOSPI was -1,080 eok won. Reading it step by step:
- Convert the unit. 1,080 × KRW 100 million = KRW 108.0 billion of net selling that session. At the October 5, 2026 USD/KRW level of around 1,343 per dollar, that is roughly USD 80 million — modest for a market the size of the KOSPI.
- Put it in sequence. The completed sessions before it read: September 28: -32,682; September 29: -29,922; September 30: -20,646; October 1: -5,558; October 2: -1,080 (all in eok won). That is five straight sessions of foreign net selling totaling roughly 89,900 eok won — about KRW 9 trillion — but with the daily pace collapsing from over 32,000 to barely 1,000. Direction says “selling”; trajectory says “the selling is exhausting itself,” a classic pre-earnings wait-and-see pattern.
- Cross-check domestic liquidity. Investor deposits (tujaja yetakgeum, idle brokerage cash) stood at roughly 104.6 trillion won and margin loans (sinyong yungja, credit extended for stock purchases) at roughly 33.5 trillion won, both as of October 1, 2026. Large deposits alongside foreign selling tell you domestic cash is sitting on the sidelines — ammunition waiting for the earnings catalyst rather than capitulation.
The same three-step read — convert, sequence, cross-check — applies in any season. The numbers above are the dated example; the method is the evergreen part.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Treating the jamjeong print as final. It omits net profit and is revisable. Below-the-line surprises arrive with the statutory report.
- Filtering DART by periodic reports only and missing preliminary releases, which file in the fair-disclosure stream.
- Quoting separate instead of consolidated figures when comparing against analyst estimates.
- Ignoring the audit opinion page of the annual report. It is one line, and it is the single most consequential line in the document.
- Dismissing a missed deadline as paperwork. Late filings sit on the escalation path toward administrative-issue designation.
FAQ
Is DART available in English?
Yes — the FSS operates an English-language DART portal, and many large-cap companies voluntarily file English versions of key disclosures. Coverage and timeliness vary by company: blue chips are usually prompt, smaller companies often file Korean-only. For anything time-sensitive, the Korean filing is the primary document.
Are preliminary earnings releases mandatory?
No. They are voluntary fair disclosures. Most large caps publish them because investor demand and fair-disclosure norms make silence impractical, but plenty of small and mid caps skip straight to the statutory report — if you see no jamjeong release, the first numbers you get may arrive near the 45-day deadline.
How different can preliminary and final numbers be?
At the revenue and operating-profit lines, revisions are usually minor. The bigger gap is structural: the preliminary release typically contains no net profit at all, so impairments, provisions, tax effects, and other below-the-line items only become visible in the reviewed or audited statements weeks later.
What happens if a company misses a filing deadline?
It risks designation as an administrative issue on the KRX, and sustained failure to file — or a non-clean audit opinion — can trigger trading suspension and a delisting review. Treat any deadline slip as information.
Sources
- KRX data portal — data.krx.co.kr (listings, trading data, administrative-issue designations)
- Naver Finance — finance.naver.com (investor flow data by session)
- KOFIA statistics — freesis.kofia.or.kr (investor deposits, margin loan balances)
- Bank of Korea ECOS — ecos.bok.or.kr (FX and macro reference series)
Disclaimer: This is an information and analysis publication, not investment advice. See our Methodology for data sources, standards, and our corrections policy.