Korea's brokerages added 402 staff in a quarter while mortgages headed to 5.78%

Korea's ten largest brokerages by equity capital added 402 staff in the second quarter, 2.4 times the 166 added by the remaining 26 firms combined ^[1][2]. First-half net profit at the major brokerages reached 10.2648 trillion won, or $7.4 billion ^[3], which makes the hiring look like arithmetic rather than sentiment.

Worth noting that Sedaily's own headline describes profit as nearing 10 trillion won while the figure it reports is 10.2648 trillion ^[3][9]. The threshold has already been crossed.

The hiring is concentrated. Kiwoom Securities added 99, Hana Securities 61, Shinhan Investment 47 and Meritz Securities 40 ^[4]. That is 247 of the 402, roughly 61 percent from four houses ^[5]. On the same numbers, the top ten took about 71 percent of the industry's 568-person increase ^[6]. Sedaily reports demand across investment banking, wealth management, digital and pension divisions ^[7], which is the spread you get when fee businesses and balance-sheet businesses are both working at once, and observers quoted in the report expect demand for specialized staff to continue for some time ^[8].

The other half of the same rate cycle is less comfortable. COFIX on newly extended loans rose 0.13 percentage points in July to 3.18 percent, a fourth consecutive monthly climb from 2.89 percent in April ^[10][11], a cumulative 29 basis points ^[12]. KB Kookmin Bank's six-month variable mortgage rate based on the new COFIX rises to a range of 4.38 to 5.78 percent starting on the 19th, and Woori Bank will raise its rate by up to 0.13 percentage points ^[13][14]. The top of KB's range sits 2.60 percentage points above the index itself ^[15], which is where the bank margin lives.

A financial industry official told Sedaily that, depending on the pace of increases, the possibility that the base rate rises to 3.75 percent early next year cannot be ruled out ^[16]. That is one unnamed voice, not a forecast, but it is the scenario under which variable-rate borrowers who have not switched to fixed find out what their household budget actually looks like.

The lease market is tightening in parallel. Sedaily reports jeonse supply down 24 percent over two years as the government's shift-to-owner-occupancy policy pushes landlords to move back in or sell, with fears of an eviction chain affecting as many as 100,000 tenant households ^[17][18]. The average jeonse price for a Seoul apartment was 622.27 million won in June, about 78 million won higher than two years earlier ^[19], an increase of roughly 14 percent ^[20]. Around 60,000 households that took jeonse loans as non-occupying single-home owners will in principle be barred, according to the report, though the passage does not specify from what ^[21].

What to watch: whether third-quarter headcount holds if profit growth flattens, since 402 hires in a quarter is a fixed cost booked against a variable revenue line. Watch the August COFIX print for a fifth consecutive rise, the volume of switching from variable to fixed at KB and Woori, and whether the 3.75 percent base-rate scenario starts appearing in more than one anonymous quote.