5 Best Forex Brokers in South Korea for 2024

List of Top Forex Brokers in South Korea

Regulatory Landscape in South Korea

Forex trading and dealings in financial securities in South Korea are regulated by the national regulatory body – the Financial Services Commission (FSC). The FSC is responsible for guaranteeing consumer protection by ensuring the stability of financial markets and upholding fair market practices. Koreans interested in forex and CFDs (Contracts-for-Difference) trading must choose a broker that adheres to the guidelines set forward by the FSC. The broker they decide to open an account with may be local or international.

While Forex trading is active 24/5, traders in South Korea must also consider several other time-related questions. Seoul trading hours correspond almost entirely with the Asian trading session (during the Tokyo and Hong Kong stock exchanges trading hours), which ends shortly after the European opening. And given that trading activity usually peaks in the two hours following the New York open and before the London close (after 11:30 p.m. Seoul time), traders in South Korea better choose a broker that offers plenty of instruments from Asian markets.

How Did FX Empire Select the Best Forex Brokers in South Korea?

• Safety and transparency. We selected brokers that adhere to the strictest safety requirements in the industry. Our picks for each category are also fairly transparent.
• Accepting Korean traders. Each of our picks accepts residents of South Korea as clients.
• Localized website, customer service, and platform. We only considered brokers that have at least one of the following: a website, platform, or customer support available in Korean.
• Instruments from Asian markets. We chose brokers with a decent offering of instruments from Asian markets.
• Competitive fees. We evaluated the spreads and commissions charged by brokers and selected those whose trading fees do not exceed the industry average.
• User-friendly and feature-rich platforms. We selected brokers offering user-friendly and feature-rich platforms that cater to both beginners and experienced traders.

Our team of experts has identified each broker’s strengths and weaknesses using FX Empire’s comprehensive methodology. Here’s how we test.

Now let’s go through the selected brokers.

How to Choose a Forex Broker in South Korea?

In this part, I will outline what traders must consider when looking for a trustworthy broker in South Korea.

How to verify if a broker is regulated?

To verify whether a broker is regulated and to identify the regulatory body overseeing it, you can take several steps:

• Check Broker Regulation: Visit the broker’s website and scroll to the bottom to find its legal name and licensing number.
• Confirm Regulatory Compliance: Go to the regulator’s website and search for the broker using the licensing number.
• Evaluate Broker Transparency: On the broker’s website, look for a ‘best execution policy.’ Also, check for statements regarding execution quality and find information about the average execution speed.
• Evaluate Fees Transparency: Check whether the broker has live spreads data on its website as well as explore the broker’s client agreement for any other non-trading fees.

Read more about Best regulated forex brokers.

How to check a broker’s protection level?

To find a trustworthy partner, make sure that the broker’s entity you choose is tightly regulated and complies with most industry safety requirements. I have broken down the most important safety mechanisms to look for in a broker below:

• Segregation of client funds. Brokers must keep their clients’ funds in separate bank accounts from the ones used for their corporate capital. This is crucial for mitigating the risk of accounting errors.
• Negative balance protection. Negative balance protection means that a trader’s losses cannot exceed their account balance. This protection is indispensable when trading high-risk instruments, such as Contracts for Difference (CFDs).
• Limited market exposure. Limiting market exposure protects traders against adverse price fluctuations. That is why most top-tier regulators cap the maximum leverage allowed at 1:30, whereas less strict regulators can allow leverage as high as 1:2000.
• Compensation scheme. Depending on the jurisdiction where a broker is situated, a compensation scheme may also protect its clients against the company’s credit risk and liabilities. For instance, brokers regulated by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) participate in the Investor Compensation Fund (ICF). In the unlikely event of the company becoming insolvent, traders can be compensated by up to 20,000 EUR. The Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) – under The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the United Kingdom – protects traders by up to 85,000 GBP.

Check out our dedicated guides on best CySEC-regulated brokers and best FCA-regulated brokers.

Why do execution standards matter?

A broker may have many top-tier licenses, but that does not necessarily guarantee the fast and precise order execution performance that you may require or expect. There is also the risk of price manipulation with less reputable companies where the broker might engage in fraudulent activities, such as driving the price down to hit your stop-loss orders. To protect yourself, you need to look for several things:

• Best execution policy. Found in a broker’s legal documents, the best execution policy is a legal mandate that the broker will provide its clients with the most favorable price quotes under prevailing market conditions.
• Quality execution statements. Also found in the legal documents, these statements underscore a broker’s execution performance every year. You can find information about a broker’s execution venues, the number of trades that were executed with positive or negative slippage, and so forth.
• Average execution speed reports. More reputable brokers would also state what their average execution speed is, as recorded in the execution statement for the previous year. This is important, especially if you are a high-frequency trader because it will inform you what kinds of strategies can be used with a given broker.

Precision and speed of order execution are also likely to be enhanced when a broker provides Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting. As a rule of thumb, look for brokers that can accommodate fast order execution speeds no higher than 100 milliseconds.

Explore Best forex broker with VPS hosting.

Based on my experience as a high-frequency trader, I know how important quick and precise order execution is for implementing intraday strategies, such as scalping. I’ve also experienced price manipulation by less reputable brokers, so I can appreciate just how important to adhere to rigorous execution standards.

If a broker maintains a ‘best execution policy,’ regularly publishes execution quality statements, and demonstrates an average execution speed below 50 milliseconds, it can be regarded as a broker that ensures very good execution standards.

Read more about Best high-frequency trading brokers.

How to assess if a broker’s trading fees are competitive?

A broker may have several account types, each with different pricing mechanisms. The question is, how to know which one is best fitted for your particular style of trading? I will answer this question by providing an example with two distinct accounts, one STP and the other ECN.

The biggest difference between STP and ECN accounts, apart from the execution model, is the pricing mechanism. Usually, STP accounts afford commission-free trading and floating spreads, whereas ECN accounts have fixed commissions and raw spreads (typically starting from 0.1 pips). At first glance, the former sounds more favorable because you only have to pay one cost – the spread – rather than two.

Read more about Best STP forex brokers and Best ECN forex brokers.

Many brokers recognize the psychological significance of this sort of thinking and seek to exploit it by raising the spreads on their STP accounts to the point where they are no longer the more competitive option. I will now demonstrate how to do a quick test for yourself to evaluate the competitiveness of a broker’s ECN and STP accounts.

Pick an instrument, say, the EURUSD. Suppose also that the spread on the pair is 0.9 pips on a broker’s STP account and 0.1 pips on its ECN account. There is also a $6 commission for trading a 1 lot (100,000 units) contract. If the EURUSD pip value is $10, you can do a simple calculation to determine the value of a hypothetical position on the EURUSD executed on both account types. The formula is the value of a trade = spread x pip value + commission. When we pop in the above values, this is what we discover about our hypothetical broker:

This is just a hypothetical example, but hopefully, it illustrates how more can be less in trading. So it’s worthwhile evaluating the costs of a broker you consider opening an account with for yourself before doing so. And if you are still uncertain, you can always check out our database of reviews to sort out the most competitive brokers.

How to choose a trading platform?

A trading platform is your window into the market. It allows you to observe price action behavior and study potential opportunities for placing orders. Technical traders use a platform’s array of indicators, drawing tools, and other features to examine various price patterns, changes in volatility, liquidity, and so on to gauge the most favorable times to enter or exit the market.

The best platforms are also the most versatile ones. They include a wide spectrum of technical indicators, such as Fibonacci retracement levels, oscillators, trend-based and range-based indicators, and others, as well as drawing tools, such as trend lines, channels, wedges, etc. They are also the ones that allow you to easily scale price action up and down.

The retail industry’s most popular platforms, MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5, have established themselves as benchmarks for simplicity and reliability over the years. While they offer a decent range of technical indicators and drawing tools for multi-timeframe analysis, their rugged design becomes evident when compared to newer and sleeker platforms. Although MetaTrader is suitable for beginners, those seeking more advanced trading capabilities may require a sophisticated platform.

Read more about Best MetaTrader 4 brokers and Best MetaTrader 5 brokers.

In response, some brokers have developed their own proprietary platforms, which offer convenience and additional features not found in MetaTrader. These platforms allow for instrument search by asset class, easy scaling of price action, and execution of complex box orders. Ultimately, the choice of the best platform for you boils down to a trade-off between simplicity and practicality.

Check out our dedicated guide on best forex trading platforms.

What to Avoid When Choosing a Forex Broker in South Korea?

Here is a quick rundown of some of the most important things to avoid:

• Unregulated brokers. Trading with an unregulated broker exposes you to a higher risk of fraud or unethical business practices, as they are not bound by any regulatory standards or rules. Additionally, in case of any disputes or if the broker goes bankrupt, there might be no legal recourse or compensation schemes available to recover your funds.
• Lack of client protection. Avoid brokers that cannot ensure more than two of the following: segregated funds, negative balance protection, compensation scheme, and maximum leverage for retail traders no bigger than 1:100
• Low execution quality. Try to avoid brokers that cannot ensure more than two of the following: best execution policy, regular quality execution statements, and average execution speed under 100 milliseconds.
• High spreads and commissions. Sidestep brokers with floating spreads from 1.8 pips or above on STP accounts and with round-turn commissions above $7 on ECN accounts.

How to Avoid Forex and CFD Scams?

Scammers rely on the gullibility of traders. A common tactic fraudsters employ is to promise quick and easy profits at no risk to the trader. Often, scammers would use labels that closely resemble the brands of real and legitimate companies. That is why regulators like the FCA have registers where traders can read about such fraudulent companies pretending to be others.

The best and easiest way to protect yourself is to make sure you work with a trustworthy and transparent broker. You can find a comprehensive list of reliable brokers by jurisdiction here.

Another important consideration is online safety. Be cautious about where you leave your personal information. Registering your details on suspicious pop-ups that promise enormous profits could lead to your contact information landing on a scammer’s dialing list. Remember, no licensed broker would make unsolicited cold calls.

The next time you get contacted out of the blue with promises of becoming the next Warren Buffet, you must remember that you are most likely speaking to a scammer. I think that nowhere is the “if something sounds too good to be true…” saying more accurate than in the world of trading. That is why you should do your due diligence before opening an account with any broker.

Our Methodology

Here at FX Empire, we have pioneered a unique methodology for evaluating Over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives brokers worldwide. Our goal is to provide a comprehensive picture of a broker’s pros and cons so that our readers can make informed decisions. We understand their need to choose the best partner for their particular goals and needs.

Our team of dedicated professionals is working continuously to improve our system and keep it up-to-date with current market trends. We test each broker systematically by employing over 250 variables across nine categories:

• Trust
• Fees
• Account Types
• Tradable Instruments
• Platforms and Tools
• Deposits and Withdrawals
• Customer Support
• Research
• Education

We strive to be as objective as possible, which is why our rigorous examinations are devoid of any personal bias as much as possible. We review the licenses of all the subsidiaries of a broker and check the fine print in the Client Agreement. The reliability of a broker is further determined based on the regulation, fees, and general transparency of the website.

We collect essential information by opening a live account with a broker entity and testing its services in real time. We measure the spreads, swaps, and commissions on its most popular account type and compare our findings to the industry average.

We also test the functionality of the available platforms, the number and types of tradable instruments, the reliability of customer support, and the quality of the research and educational materials.

For this guide, we chose brokers that meet the highest industry standards for safety and are transparent in their operations. All our picks accept South Korean residents as clients. We prioritized brokers that offer either a Korean website, platform, or customer support. Our choices also feature a solid range of instruments from Asian markets. In terms of fees, we selected brokers with competitive spreads and commissions that align with or are below the industry average. Finally, we favored brokers providing user-friendly and feature-rich platforms, catering to both novice and seasoned traders.

We abide by our strict guidelines for editorial integrity based on the objective standards we have set for our reviews. You can read more about our review process here.

Meet Our Writers

The team of forex and CFD analysts and editors at FXEmpire is composed of trading industry professionals and seasoned financial journalists. Our experts have been published on leading financial websites such as Investopedia and Forbes. In addition, they all have extensive trading experience.

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