Gate Stocks has rolled out Korean stock trading, letting users buy and sell KRX-listed shares using USDT – no traditional Korean brokerage account or won exchange needed. The service covers the top 1,000 companies by market cap on the KOSPI and KOSDAQ indices, including household names like Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, NAVER, Hyundai Motor, and Celltrion.
How the trading works
The platform uses the same unified stock account system it already offers for U.S. and Hong Kong stocks. That means a single account handles everything. Trading hours follow the Korea Exchange regular session: 09:00 to 15:20 KST. Only continuous auction orders are supported for now, so no pre-market or after-hours action.
Prices, market caps, and profit-and-loss figures show up in Korean won. But when it comes to fees and settlement, everything converts to USDT at the real-time exchange rate. So an investor sees the KRW price but pays in crypto.
Fractional shares and low fees
Gate also offers fractional share trading, letting users buy as little as 0.01 of a share. That opens up high-priced Korean stocks to smaller accounts. And for frequent traders, the platform's VIP program can cut stock trading fees to as low as 0.023% – a rate that kicks in with just $2,000 in holdings.
The company says it now provides access to more than 11,500 stock assets globally: over 10,000 U.S. stocks, 1,500+ Hong Kong stocks, and the new Korean lineup. That's on top of its core crypto exchange, which supports trading across more than 4,700 digital assets.
Who Gate is
Gate was founded in 2013 by Dr. Han. It serves over 54 million users worldwide. The move into Korean stocks is the latest push to blend traditional equities with crypto-based settlement, letting people use stablecoins to buy into foreign markets without the usual banking hurdles.
For now, the service is live and accepting orders. The next question is how quickly the Korean financial authorities – or traditional brokerages – respond to a crypto-native platform offering direct access to their market.
