In this paper, we consider an initial-value problem for the Korteweg–de Vries equation. The normalized Korteweg–de Vries equation considered is given by $$\begin{equation*} u_{\tau }+u u_{x}+u_{xxx}=0, \quad -\infty <x<\infty ,\ \tau >0, \end{equation*}$$ where $\def \xmlpi #1{}\def \mathsfbi #1{\boldsymbol {\mathsf {#1}}}\let \le =\leqslant \let \leq =\leqslant \let \ge =\geqslant \let \geq =\geqslant \def \Pr {\mathit {Pr}}\def \Fr {\mathit {Fr}}\def \Rey {\mathit {Re}}x$ and $\tau $ represent dimensionless distance and time, respectively. In particular, we consider the case when the initial data has a discontinuous compressive step, where $u(x,0) =u_{0}>0$ for $x \le 0$ and $u(x,0)=0$ for $x>0$. The method of matched asymptotic coordinate expansions is used to obtain the detailed large-$\tau $ asymptotic structure of the solution to this problem, which exhibits the formation of a dispersive shock wave.