If you owned iShares MSCI South Korea ETF (NYSEARCA:EWY) on Friday morning, you had a roughly $204 share by the closing bell that was worth $175.19, a roughly 14% single-day decline that, by intraday magnitude, was the fund's worst session since the March 2020 COVID crash.
South Korea's KOSPI plunged on Monday as a global chip selloff turned into a full-blown stress test for one of the world's hottest equity markets. The benchmark index triggered a Level 1 circuit breaker just minutes after the open, falling as much as 8.4% to around 7,477 in early trade.
South Korea's KOSPI tripped circuit breakers in early Monday local trading and is down roughly 7.25% as of 10:45 p.m.
Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix fell sharply on Friday as a selloff in US chip stocks spilled into South Korea, raising fresh questions about the country's heavy dependence on the artificial intelligence boom. The KOSPI opened 3.66% lower and later dropped as much as 5.7%, prompting the Korea Exchange to trigger a sell-side sidecar that briefly suspended programme trading.
South Korea's AI-fueled rally has made it the world's sixth-largest stock market, and the rally may be far from over. Investors may want to keep South Korea ETFs on their radar.
In previous decades, South Korea has always been a cultural and financial afterthought after Japan, with its dominance in electronics and engineering through companies like Sony, Toyota, JVC, Honda, and Mitsubishi; and China, with its enormous low cost manufacturing, geopolitical and military clout, and expanding middle class prosperity.
Korea has gone mad for AI. Capital-M Mad, the kind that turns a niche 3x leveraged country fund into the most-watched ticker on Korean retail brokerage screens.
The AI trade is hot, and it could stay hot for quite some time. Undoubtedly, much of the strength has been concentrated in the storage and memory stocks.
Just over three years ago, you wouldn't have thought that the South Korean stock market would be such a source of profound strength as the AI boom took off and things like storage and memory chips started seeing demand overwhelm supply.
South Korea's KOSPI has gone from emerging-markets afterthought to the best major equity story of 2026, and the engine is sitting inside every advanced AI server on Earth.
Here's a fact that might shock you: the iShares MSCI South Korea ETF (NYSEARCA:EWY | EWY Price Prediction) has ripped 303.3% higher in U.S.
South Korean tech firm Kakao Corp said it has failed to reach a pay deal with its union after second-round negotiations mediated by the government on Wednesday.