Ingenia Therapeutics is about to be the first foreign biotech to list in South Korea's Kosdaq in five years.

This month, SK Hynix pulled off the largest American depositary receipt offering in Wall Street history, raising 26.5 billion dollars on the Nasdaq and pricing its shares above the Seoul price, something I wrote about here when it happened. Money and attention flowed out of Korea and into New York. Now Korea's own exchange wants to run that trade in reverse, and it already has a real company doing it, not just a plan.

A Boston biotech opens the door

Ingenia Therapeutics, a drug developer founded in Boston in 2018, opens retail subscription for its Kosdaq listing on July 30 and 31, with shares set to begin trading August 4. It will be the first foreign biotech to list on the Kosdaq in five years, since Neoimmunetech, a Maryland company, listed there in March 2021. That five year wait says something about how rare this still is. Ingenia is going public through a Korean Depositary Receipt, or KDR, a structure that lets a foreign company keep its shares parked with an overseas custodian while a Korean depositary issues a matching security that trades on the Kosdaq, so Korean retail investors can buy in without opening a foreign brokerage account.

Ingenia has a real reason to believe Korean investors will show up. Its lead antibody candidate, IGT-427, was licensed to the UK biotech EyeBio in 2022 for close to 1 trillion won. Two years later, in 2024, EyeBio itself was bought by Merck (MRK), the American pharmaceutical giant known outside the US as MSD, for 3 billion dollars, and IGT-427 became one of MSD's core eye disease programs, now in two Phase 3 trials under the code name MK-8748 for wet age-related macular degeneration. MSD is expected to start an additional Phase 3 trial for diabetic eye swelling later this year. None of that revenue belongs to Ingenia anymore, since it licensed the drug away years ago, but the deal is the proof point the company is selling to Korean investors: a molecule discovered in its own labs is now inside a major pharmaceutical company's late stage pipeline. Ingenia's offering is priced between 12,000 and 14,500 won a share, aiming to raise 60 to 72.5 billion won, led by Samsung Securities.

It is not the only one

Three more Korean-founded, US-based biotechs are reportedly moving toward the same Kosdaq path, each with its own licensing deal to point to. Breeze Bio signed a 970 billion won immune modulation deal with Genentech, a Roche subsidiary, in 2024. Pinetree Therapeutics licensed a targeted protein degradation program to AstraZeneca for about 820 billion won. Kaigene signed a deal worth up to 744 million dollars with Celltrion, a Korean drugmaker, for two autoimmune disease antibody programs. All four companies share the same basic story: founded or led by Korean scientists, headquartered in the United States, and now looking to raise money from the Korean public markets that first funded the research behind them, using the same KDR structure since US corporate law does not fit neatly into how Korean securities rules are written.

Regulators want more of this, not less

This is not a coincidence limited to biotech. Korea's Financial Services Commission told the president this month that one company listed on the New York Stock Exchange has directly asked the Korea Exchange about a Kosdaq listing, and about ten more foreign companies are reviewing the idea. The regulator would not name the NYSE company. To go after more of them, the government is running what it calls Korea Premium Week from September 28 through October 16, an investor relations push aimed at global pension funds, investment banks, and asset managers, with a separate push into Silicon Valley planned for later this year specifically to recruit growth companies to list on the Kosdaq.

The timing lines up with a broader rework of the Kosdaq itself. Regulators are running what they call a three part structural overhaul: easier listing standards for innovative companies (three new qualifying categories added for the second half of this year), tougher delisting rules for weak ones (already in effect since July 1), and a new tiered market segment structure starting in January 2027 that is meant to separate stronger companies from the rest. Settlement is also set to move from two days to one day by 2027. None of this guarantees the ten companies the regulator mentioned actually list, and Ingenia's own offering still has to clear its subscription this month before any of it means much. But the direction is clear: after watching SK Hynix's money and headlines go to New York, Korea is trying to build a path for capital to flow back the other way.

Sources

• Financial News (Korean language): FSC reports NYSE company's Kosdaq inquiry, Korea Premium Week set for September
• Ajunews (Korean language): NYSE-listed company pursuing a Korean Depositary Receipt listing
• Herald Corp (Korean language): FSC's three-part Kosdaq structural reform program
• Seoul Economic Daily (Korean language): four Korean-founded US biotechs knocking on the Kosdaq's door
• Newspim (Korean language): Ingenia Therapeutics' Kosdaq listing, IGT-427, and IPO details
• 38 Communication (Korean language): Ingenia Therapeutics IPO subscription schedule
• Edaily (Korean language): Korea Premium Week, from "Korea discount" to "Korea premium"
• Our earlier coverage: SK Hynix priced its Nasdaq debut above Seoul and how to buy SK Hynix stock now that it trades on Nasdaq

Figures in this piece are sourced from Korean financial media and public IPO filings. This is not investment advice.