South Korea’s exports hit record high on AI boom

Exports jump 83.5 percent to top $120bn for the first time amid ferocious semiconductor demand.

Samsung Electronics's Nano City Hwaseong Campus semiconductor factory in Hwaseong, South Korea, on November 19, 2019 [File: Ed Jones/AFP]

South Korea’s exports have surged to a monthly record amid explosive demand for chips used to power artificial intelligence.

Exports jumped 83.5 percent year-on-year to $120.9bn in September, eclipsing the previous monthly record of $102.25bn set in June, preliminary customs figures showed on Thursday.

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Chip shipments accounted for nearly half of exports, soaring more than 260 percent to $60.3bn, according to data from the Korea Customs Service.

Total exports from January through September hit $814.5bn, exceeding those for all of 2025, when exports reached a record $709.7bn.

During the first nine months of the year, the country recorded a trade surplus of $49.85bn.

“This is a valuable achievement that once again demonstrates the strength of our industries and companies, and is thanks to the sweat and efforts of our entrepreneurs who have competed fiercely in the global market,” said Kim Jeong-kwan, South Korea’s minister for trade and industry, in a statement.

“While we expect to achieve $1 trillion in annual exports, the strengthening of global protectionism and tensions in the Middle East remain major variables affecting our exports,” Kim said.

South Korea’s economy has been running red-hot this year amid a global shortage of memory chips used in AI.

Asia’s fourth-largest economy is home to one of the world’s largest semiconductor industries, led by top memory chip makers SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics.

SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics together control roughly 80 percent of the global market for high-bandwidth memory and 60 percent of the market for dynamic random-access memory, according to Counterpoint Research.

South Korea’s nominal gross domestic product (GDP) growth hit a five-decade high in the April-June quarter, skyrocketing 26.4 percent year-on-year.

South Korea’s Ministry of Finance and Economy has forecast real GDP to grow 3 percent in 2026, which would be the strongest performance since 2017, excluding the outlier years of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The AI boom has also propelled the country’s stock market into the ranks of the best-performing bourses this year, with the benchmark Kospi rising nearly 60 percent.

受半导体需求强劲推动，出口额飙升 83.5%，首次突破 1200 亿美元大关。

2019年11月19日，位于韩国华城的三星电子Nano City华城园区半导体工厂。[图片：Ed Jones/AFP]

由于人工智能芯片需求激增，韩国出口额创下月度新高。

周四公布的海关初步数据显示，9月份出口额同比增长83.5%，达到1209亿美元，超过了6月份创下的1022.5亿美元的月度纪录。

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根据韩国海关总署的数据，芯片出货量占出口总额的近一半，飙升超过 260%，达到 603 亿美元。

今年1月至9月，出口总额达到8145亿美元，超过了2025年全年的出口额（2025年全年出口额创下7097亿美元的纪录）。

今年前九个月，该国录得贸易顺差 498.5 亿美元。

韩国贸易和工业部长金正冠在一份声明中表示：“这是一项宝贵的成就，再次展现了我们产业和企业的实力，这要归功于我们企业家在全球市场上激烈竞争所付出的汗水和努力。”

金表示：“虽然我们预计每年出口额将达到1万亿美元，但全球保护主义的加强和中东地区的紧张局势仍然是影响我们出口的主要变数。”

今年以来，由于全球人工智能所需的内存芯片短缺，韩国经济一直保持着火热的增长势头。

亚洲第四大经济体拥有全球最大的半导体产业之一，其中以顶级存储芯片制造商 SK 海力士和三星电子为主导。

据 Counterpoint Research 的数据显示，SK 海力士和三星电子合计控制着全球高带宽内存市场约 80% 的份额和动态随机存取存储器市场约 60% 的份额。

韩国4月至6月季度名义国内生产总值（GDP）增速创下50年来新高，同比增长26.4%。

韩国财政经济部预测，2026年韩国实际GDP将增长3%，这将是自2017年以来最强劲的增长，不包括新冠疫情期间的异常年份。

人工智能的蓬勃发展也推动该国股市跻身今年表现最佳的股市之列，基准 Kospi 指数上涨了近 60%。