Sunrise scene of Seoul downtown city skyline, Aerial view of N Seoul Tower at Namsan Park in twilight sky in morning. The best viewpoint and trekking from inwangsan mountain in Seoul city, South Korea
Mongkol Chuewong | Moment | Getty Images
Asia-Pacific markets were mixed on the penultimate trading day of this year, after Wall Street declined on Friday.
South Korea’s Kospi rose 0.91%, while the Kosdaq added 1.74% Monday, even as the country grapples with political turmoil and downbeat industrial data, among other things.
South Korea witnessed its deadliest air disaster on Sunday that claimed 179 lives when a Jeju Air plane crashed into a wall at Muan International Airport, bursting into flames.
South Korea’s acting President Choi Sang-mok instructed an urgent safety inspection of the nation’s airline operation system, to be carried out once the recovery efforts for the Jeju Air crash are completed.
Shares of Jeju Air hit an all-time low Monday, according to FactSet data, and were last down 8.53%. Other Korean airlines’ stocks were volatile. Korean Air slipped 1%, budget airlines T’way Air and Jin Air fell 3.23% and 2.12%, respectively. Air Busan climbed over 13%.
South Korea’s industrial output contracted 0.7% on a monthly basis in November, greater than the 0.4% decline expected by Reuters. On an annual basis, industrial output rose 0.1%, smaller than Reuters’ expectations of a 0.4% climb. This compares to October’s reading of a 6.3% increase.
The country’s parliament on Dec. 27 voted to impeach acting President Han Duck-soo, not long after Yoon got impeached as a result of his brief martial law decree, which plunged the country into political turmoil. The country’s investigation agency on Monday reportedly sought an arrest warrant for Yoon.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell 0.82%, while the Topix was down 0.30%
Japan’s factory activity contracted at a slower rate in December. The au Jibun Bank Japan Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index climbed to 49.6 in December, coming in slightly above November’s reading of 49.0 and marking the softest contraction in three months. However, the figure remained below the 50 threshold that separates expansion from contraction.
“The headline reading moved closer to neutrality amid softer reductions in both production and new order intakes,” said Usamah Bhatti at S&P Global Market Intelligence.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 traded 0.51% lower.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index rose 0.15%, while mainland China’s CSI 300 climbed 0.53%.
Traders await China’s manufacturing PMI on Tuesday, while markets will be closed on Wednesday for New Year’s Day holiday.
U.S. stocks fell Friday, led by technology names, but major indexes still rose for the week.
The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 333.59 points, or 0.77%, to 42,992.21, falling for the first time in six sessions. The S&P 500 fell 1.11% to 5,970.84. The Nasdaq Composite slid 1.49% to 19,722.03, as Tesla dropped about 5% and Nvidia fell 2%.
—CNBC’s Yun Li and Pia Singh contributed to this report.
