South Korea’s exports hit record high on AI boom

Exports leap 83.5 percent to apical $120bn for the archetypal clip amid ferocious semiconductor demand.

South Korea’s exports person surged to a monthly grounds amid explosive request for chips utilized to powerfulness artificial intelligence.

Exports jumped 83.5 percent year-on-year to $120.9bn successful September, eclipsing the erstwhile monthly grounds of $102.25bn acceptable successful June, preliminary customs figures showed connected Thursday.

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Chip shipments accounted for astir fractional of exports, soaring much than 260 percent to $60.3bn, according to information from the Korea Customs Service.

Total exports from January done September deed $814.5bn, exceeding those for each of 2025, erstwhile exports reached a grounds $709.7bn.

During the archetypal 9 months of the year, the state recorded a commercialized surplus of $49.85bn.

“This is simply a invaluable accomplishment that erstwhile again demonstrates the spot of our industries and companies, and is acknowledgment to the sweat and efforts of our entrepreneurs who person competed fiercely successful the planetary market,” said Kim Jeong-kwan, South Korea’s curate for commercialized and industry, successful a statement.

“While we expect to execute $1 trillion successful yearly exports, the strengthening of planetary protectionism and tensions successful the Middle East stay large variables affecting our exports,” Kim said.

South Korea’s system has been moving red-hot this twelvemonth amid a planetary shortage of representation chips utilized successful AI.

Asia’s fourth-largest system is location to 1 of the world’s largest semiconductor industries, led by apical representation spot makers SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics.

SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics unneurotic power astir 80 percent of the planetary marketplace for high-bandwidth representation and 60 percent of the marketplace for dynamic random-access memory, according to Counterpoint Research.

South Korea’s nominal gross home merchandise (GDP) maturation deed a five-decade precocious successful the April-June quarter, skyrocketing 26.4 percent year-on-year.

South Korea’s Ministry of Finance and Economy has forecast existent GDP to turn 3 percent successful 2026, which would beryllium the strongest show since 2017, excluding the outlier years of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The AI roar has besides propelled the country’s banal marketplace into the ranks of the best-performing bourses this year, with the benchmark Kospi rising astir 60 percent.