The amount of money raised by newly listed firms on South Korea's secondary bourse reached a 15-year high last year despite an economic downturn at home and abroad, the bourse operator said Sunday.

Local companies raised a combined 2.1 trillion won ($1.75 billion) through initial public offerings on the tech-savvy KOSDAQ throughout 2015, soaring 79.6 percent from a year earlier, according to the Korea Exchange.

It marked the largest amount since 2000, when the figure reached 2.55 trillion won on the back of a boom in the venture industry.

The number of companies that went public on the KOSDAQ bourse last year shot up 76.8 percent on-year to a 13-year high of 122.

Double U Games Co., an online game software developer, went public last year to raise 277.7 billion won, the third biggest amount in KOSDAQ history.

"We expect more new listings in the first quarter of this year as there are many companies waiting for their KOSDAQ debut," the bourse operator said.

The secondary bourse was on a roll last year, while the main bourse moved in a tight box range as global uncertainties like a U.S. rate hike and a Chinese slowdown weighed heavily on the South Korean economy.

KOSDAQ jumped 25.6 percent to close at 682 points over the one-year period, while the benchmark KOSPI climbed 2.4 percent to 1,961 points. (Yonhap)