Unclaimed Shares Total 1.5 Trillion Won... 26,000 Shareholders Yet to Claim Them [2026 Parliamentary Audit]

Number of shareholders exceeds 26,000
Individual holdings valued at up to KRW 70.6 billion
Notices sent to fewer than half of shareholders with unclaimed shares

Unclaimed shares held by the Korea Securities Depository are worth KRW 1.5 trillion, but shares returned to their owners through campaigns over the past five years have averaged just KRW 55.7 billion annually, it has been confirmed.

Han Minsu, a lawmaker of the Democratic Party of Korea. Yonhap News

According to data submitted by the Korea Securities Depository to Han Minsu, a lawmaker of the Democratic Party of Korea and a member of the National Assembly’s Political Affairs Committee, unclaimed shares totaled 800,840,418 as of the end of August 2026, with an appraised value of KRW 1.4707 trillion.

These shares go unclaimed when certificates issued through corporate paid-in capital increases, bonus issues, stock dividends, and other events are not delivered to their owners. This can happen when shareholders are unaware of such events or do not receive related notices because they have changed their addresses. Unclaimed shares are held by the Korea Securities Depository and other share registrar and transfer agents.

Unclaimed shares, which stood at 763,536,816 shares worth KRW 1.4443 trillion at the end of 2025, increased in appraised value by about KRW 26.4 billion over the first eight months of 2026. The number of shareholders with unclaimed shares rose by 931, from 25,349 at the end of 2025 to 26,280 at the end of August 2026. As of the end of August 2026, there were 22,526 individual shareholders and 3,754 corporate shareholders.

The largest appraised value of unclaimed shares held by an individual shareholder was KRW 70.67 billion, for a holder of 644,247 shares. Among corporations, the largest holding was 42,227,674 shares, valued at KRW 211.14 billion. Unclaimed dividends also amounted to about KRW 5.6 billion for individuals and about KRW 170 million for corporations.

By contrast, the Korea Securities Depository returned a total of KRW 278.3 billion worth of shares to their owners through its “Campaign to Find Owners of Unclaimed Shares” over the past five years. This works out to an annual average of about KRW 55.7 billion, equivalent to about 3.9% of the unclaimed share balance at the end of 2025.

Each year, the Korea Securities Depository runs the campaign and mails notices to the actual residential addresses of shareholders with unclaimed shares, identified through the Ministry of the Interior and Safety. Last year, notices were sent to 9,492 people, fewer than half of the 25,349 shareholders with unclaimed shares at the end of 2025. This has prompted calls to review the criteria for selecting recipients and the procedures for verifying addresses.

“We need to run more proactive campaigns, including sending text messages in cooperation with the three major telecom operators,” Han said. “More than KRW 1 trillion in shares is still waiting to be claimed, and we need to review whether the current notification methods and claiming procedures are adequate.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.