About this site
A single-purpose tracker for the price gap between Korean and global crypto markets.
What this site does
This site measures the Kimchi Premium — how much more, or less, a cryptocurrency costs on a South Korean exchange compared with the global market. It samples prices once per minute and keeps every sample, so both the live figure and its history can be read off the same dataset.
We track ten major assets: Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Solana, Dogecoin, Cardano, TRON, Chainlink, Avalanche and Polkadot.
Why we built it
Most price sites quote a single global number. Korea is one of the few large markets where the local price can drift meaningfully away from that global number and stay there for weeks, because capital controls and exchange residency rules limit arbitrage. That gap is interesting on its own, but it is poorly served in English — most Kimchi Premium coverage is either Korean-language or a static explainer with no live data behind it.
We already had continuous access to Korean exchange data, so publishing the measurement in English was a natural thing to do.
Where the data comes from
- Korean price — Upbit public ticker API (KRW markets).
- Global price — Binance public 24h ticker API (USDT markets).
- Exchange rate — Upbit's own KRW-USDT market, not a bank rate.
Both sources are public, documented, and require no authentication. We do not redistribute any licensed or paid market data feed.
How the number is produced
Every minute a collector reads all three inputs in a single pass and stores one row per asset. The premium is computed at write time, so the stored history reflects exactly what was published at that moment. Daily open, high, low, close and average are derived from those stored samples rather than sampled separately.
The full formula and the reasoning behind the exchange-rate choice are on the tracker page, and explained at length in the guide.
Limitations we want to be upfront about
- Data collection can be interrupted by API outages or network failures. Gaps are not backfilled, because historical minute-level premium cannot be reconstructed after the fact.
- We show spot prices, not order book depth. A large order would not fill at the quoted price.
- The premium is not a trade you can simply execute. See the guide for why.
- Nothing here is investment advice. See our terms.
Contact
Corrections, data questions and partnership enquiries are welcome via our contact page.