The Kospi index plunged to an intraday low of 5,532.33 on Wednesday, triggering a market-wide circuit breaker for the second day in a row a first in South Korean market history. The selloff wiped out early gains after the index opened more than 1% higher, falling sharply amid a deepening chip-stock rout.
Trading was halted on both the Kospi and Kosdaq indexes for 20 minutes following steep drops. Kosdaq triggered the halt first, tumbling 8.05% to 649.00 at 12:19 p.m. local time. The Kospi followed 13 minutes later with an 8.15% drop from Tuesday’s close, marking a historic back-to-back halt event. These consecutive circuit breakers come on the heels of Tuesday’s eighth halt this year, when the Kospi fell over 8% intraday and closed down 10.8% after a Chinese firm started mass-producing a homegrown deep ultraviolet chipmaking tool. This development threatens Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix’s dominance in the memory-chip export market.
The continued slump was driven by persistent weakness in major semiconductor stocks, heavy foreign selling, and concerns around leveraged single-stock ETFs that have ballooned earlier this year. SK Hynix’s shares sank despite reporting a remarkable 557% jump in quarterly profit, a figure that still fell short of the sky-high expectations fueled by AI-driven memory-chip demand. The disconnect underlines how far semiconductor valuations in Asia have outpaced fundamentals.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin defied the local stock turmoil, climbing about 1% above $64,000. This marks the second straight week of Bitcoin decoupling from South Korea’s chip-stock selloff, offering a sharp contrast to the domestic equities market.
