Musinsa, the South Korean fashion platform at the heart of the global K-fashion boom, is preparing to launch its long-awaited Kospi listing at a valuation of around $6bn, according to KED Global. A special tax audit into an affiliate of founder Cho Man-ho risks delaying the Korea Exchange’s approval of the listing. The preliminary review is the gating step in any Kospi flotation, and a live probe touching the founder’s interests introduces a timing risk.

The roughly $6bn target is about double the level implied by recent secondary transactions in Musinsa shares, which changed hands at around half that figure, according to KED Global. Founded in 2001 as an online sneaker community, Musinsa has grown into Korea’s leading fashion platform, hosting more than 8,000 domestic and international brands and running its own fast-growing private label, Musinsa Standard, alongside the women-focused 29CM and the sneaker-resale site Sold Out. As global appetite for Korean fashion has surged in the slipstream of K-pop and Korean culture, the company has pushed abroad, expanding in Japan, forming a China joint venture with Anta Sports, and signing an exclusive distribution deal in Indonesia with market leader MAP.

The IPO is essentially meant to bankroll that international build-out. At home, meanwhile, Musinsa is contesting an intensifying fashion-platform war against rivals including Shinsegae’s luxury-focused Shinsegae V, Ably, and Zigzag. KKR led a $190m Series C in Musinsa in 2023 alongside Wellington Management, its first technology growth investment in the country, following earlier backing from Sequoia and IMM.

Founder Cho Man-ho, who built the business from an online community he started as a teenager, remains its largest shareholder with about 52% and its chief executive. Musinsa generated more than 1tn won (about $680m) in sales in 2024, with operating profit above 100bn won, and posted record first-quarter revenue of 363.6bn won in 2026, up 24.1% year on year. Musinsa has lined up Korea Investment & Securities and Citigroup as lead managers, though it has previously weighed an overseas listing, with Nasdaq under consideration.

It is attempting all this in a subdued Korean IPO market, where tightened dual-listing rules and stricter review standards have thinned the pipeline.