South Korea's semiconductor exports just tripled year-over-year. Is it too much of a good thing?

SK Hynix Inc. 12-layer HBM4E memory chips on a LPDDR5X CAMM2 memory module arranged at the company's office in Seongnam, South Korea, on Friday, July 24, 2026. SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics Co. are set to test investor appetite for memory chips as South Korea's stock market now a bellwether for global AI sentiment grapples with violent swings driven by leveraged chip bets. Photographer: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesBloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesSouth Korea's semiconductor exports have been an absolute boon for Asia's fourth-largest economy, sending overall numbers to a record. But the frenetic pace itself is causing concern about what's next. Semiconductor exports surged 209% from a year earlier to a record $46.65 billion in August, accounting for 47.5% of the country's $98.25 billion in goods exports that month, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources reported earlier this week. That was mainly due to AI infrastructure demand as large cloud providers including Google and Amazon expanded capital spending, it said."In my estimate, semiconductor exports accounted for nearly 80% of export growth in August," Jeff Ng, head of Asia macro strategy at Sumitomo Mit...