How to Buy Samsung Stock Outside Korea: Shares, London GDR and ETFs

There are three main ways to hold Samsung Electronics from outside Korea. You can own the shares themselves on the Korea Exchange (KRX) through a broker with Korean market access. You can trade its global depositary receipts (GDRs) on the London Stock Exchange. Or you can hold an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that owns Samsung alongside other Korean stocks. Samsung’s investor relations page lists only two markets, KRX and London, so there is no listing on a US exchange. The routes differ in currency, trading hours, unit size, voting and dividends. This guide compares them. It does not say which one suits whom.

Won amounts are converted at 1,338.3 won per US dollar, the 15:30 Korea time close on October 14, 2026 (Bank of Korea, ECOS), unless another date is given. For October 13 the rate is 1,345.1.

What counts as “Samsung stock”?

Samsung Electronics has two classes of shares, both listed on KRX in Seoul:

• Common shares, code 005930: 5,846,278,608 shares at the end of June 2026, 87.9% of the total, according to Samsung.
• Preferred shares, code 005935: 802,371,203 shares, the other 12.1%.

When a headline says Samsung fell 7.39% on October 13, it means the common shares. They closed at 232,000 won (about US$172) that day and at the same price on October 14. On October 14 the common shares were worth about 1,356.3 trillion won, or roughly US$1.01 trillion. Foreign investors held 46.18% of them on October 13.

Samsung is the largest single box on our KOSPI 200 market map. On October 13 it made up 29.5% of the map by market value. Our heatmap guide explains how to read that box.

How do Samsung common and preferred shares differ?

• Votes. Common shares carry votes at the shareholders’ meeting. The preferred shares do not: the London Stock Exchange describes the preferred GDR as representing “non-voting preferred” shares.
• Dividends. Recently the two classes have received almost the same amount. Samsung paid 372 won a share on both for the first quarter of 2026 and 374 won for the second. The year-end dividend for 2025 was 566 won per common share and 567 won per preferred share.
• Price. The preferred shares trade below the common shares. At the KRX regular-session close on October 13, the preferred shares were 174,300 won against 232,000 won for the common, 24.9% lower. On October 14 they closed at 173,600 won, 25.2% below the common shares’ 232,000 won.
• Yield. With a similar dividend and a lower price, the yield on the preferred shares is higher. Samsung’s own notice put the second-quarter dividend at 0.2% of the preferred share price and 0.1% of the common.
• Size. At the October 14 close of 173,600 won a share, the whole preferred class was worth roughly 139.3 trillion won (about US$104.1 billion), close to a tenth of the common class.

What are Samsung’s London GDRs?

A GDR is a receipt issued by a depositary bank that holds the underlying Samsung shares in Korea. Samsung has two GDR lines on the London Stock Exchange, according to the exchange:

• SMSN: each GDR represents 25 common shares. ISIN US7960508882.
• SMSD: each GDR represents 25 non-voting preferred shares. ISIN US7960502018.

Samsung’s own listing page shows the preferred GDR as “SMSEL”, while the exchange and Samsung’s dividend notices use SMSD.

Both trade in US dollars on the exchange’s International Order Book, the segment for overseas shares and depositary receipts. Both are Regulation S issues, which means they were offered outside the United States.

One GDR is a large unit. Twenty-five common shares at the Seoul close of 232,000 won on October 14 come to 5.8 million won, or about US$4,334, for one SMSN. London prices are set at a different time of day, so a GDR’s own price can differ from that figure.

Dividends and any votes on GDRs pass through the depositary bank, under the terms of its deposit agreement. Trading volume in London varies by line; check it with your broker or the exchange before trading.

Which ETFs hold Samsung?

One US-listed fund that tracks Korea is the iShares MSCI South Korea ETF (EWY), traded on NYSE Arca. It follows the MSCI Korea 25/50 index. Its expense ratio is 0.59% a year, and it had net assets of US$22.66 billion on October 14. iShares’ holdings file for October 13 listed 78 holdings:

• Samsung Electronics common shares: 22.81%
• SK hynix: 22.69%
• Samsung Electronics preferred shares: 0.05%
• Samsung Electro-Mechanics: 2.80%
• SK Square: 2.66%

Samsung’s weight in the fund is lower than its 29.5% share of the KOSPI 200 map. The two use different indices, and the “25/50” in the index name refers to two caps: no single company, counted together with the listed companies it controls, may exceed 25% of the index, and the companies weighing more than 5% may not together exceed 50%. MSCI applies a 10% buffer to both limits at each rebalancing, which brings them down to 22.5% and 45%.

An ETF holder owns units of the fund, not Samsung shares. The fund votes the shares, and dividends from all its holdings arrive as fund distributions in US dollars, after fund costs. In EWY, the holder gets SK hynix in almost the same amount as Samsung. Our HBM guide compares the two companies’ memory businesses.

Other US-listed Korea funds exist, for example the Franklin FTSE South Korea ETF (FLKR).

How do the three routes compare on currency, hours and costs?

Times below are for mid-October 2026. The UK’s clocks go back on October 25 and New York’s on November 1. After that, the London and New York sessions start one hour later in Singapore time. Korea and Singapore do not change their clocks.

Seoul shares (005930, 005935)

• Currency: Korean won.
• Regular session: 09:00 to 15:30 Korea time, which is 08:00 to 14:30 in Singapore and 20:00 to 02:30 in New York, overnight.
• Unit: one share. One common share at 232,000 won is about US$173, or about S$222 at the Bank of Korea’s exchange rate of 1,047.35 won per Singapore dollar for October 14.
• Costs: broker commission, currency conversion and a securities transaction tax of 0.20% of the sale price on KOSPI shares, including a special surtax, according to SK hynix’s US prospectus (Form 424B4).
• Dividend tax: Korea withholds 22.0% of dividends paid to non-residents, including local income tax, or a lower treaty rate, according to the same filing. For individual portfolio investors the treaty rate is 15% for residents of Singapore and the UK and 16.5% for US residents, according to PwC and Korea’s National Tax Service.

London GDRs (SMSN, SMSD)

• Currency: US dollars.
• Session: 08:00 to 16:30 London time, which is 15:00 to 23:30 in Singapore and 03:00 to 11:30 in New York.
• Unit: one GDR, worth 25 shares (about US$4,334 for SMSN at the October 14 Seoul close).
• Costs: broker commission, the dealing spread and depositary fees.
• No overlap with the KRX regular session, so GDR prices also react to news after the Korean close.

US-listed ETF (EWY)

• Currency: US dollars.
• Session: 09:30 to 16:00 New York time, which is 21:30 to 04:00 in Singapore.
• Unit: one fund share; the fund had about 78 holdings.
• Costs: the 0.59% annual expense ratio, broker commission and any US tax on distributions for non-US holders. The IRS taxes most US-source income paid to foreign persons at 30% unless a tax treaty lowers it, and the US has no income tax treaty with Singapore.

Where does a Korean brokerage account fit in?

Owning the Seoul shares, including the preferred class, means a broker that can reach KRX, either a Korean firm that accepts non-residents or a global broker with Korean market access. Account rules, registration and fees are in our guide to Korean stocks from abroad.

SK hynix offers a different case: a depositary receipt listed in the United States. Our SK hynix ADR guide sets that out next to the Korean shares.

What to check when comparing prices across routes

• Divide a GDR price by 25 to get a per-share figure.
• Convert won at the same moment. A Seoul close and a London close are hours apart, and the exchange rate moves in between.
• Date every ETF weight. EWY’s holdings change daily with prices and fund flows. The 22.81% figure is for October 13.