Markets
Korea's October Exports Jumped 93.7% to $115.3B
South Korea's exports rose 93.7% from a year earlier to $115.3 billion in October, a record for the month, as chip sales grew 259%. Both figures were still below September's peaks.
South Korea published the first hard trade data for October on Sunday, November 1, and it confirmed that the AI hardware boom has not paused. Exports rose 93.7% from a year earlier to $115.3 billion, the trade ministry said, while imports grew 36% to $72.78 billion, leaving a surplus of $42.5 billion. Exports for January to October passed $900 billion for the first time, and the ministry said annual shipments could reach $1 trillion as early as November.
Semiconductors did most of the work. Chip exports climbed 259% to $56.4 billion, almost half of all shipments, driven by investment in AI infrastructure. Other items grew far more slowly: petroleum products rose 80% to $6.92 billion on higher oil prices, cars 18.1% to $6.55 billion on demand for gasoline hybrids, petrochemicals 27.5% to $4 billion and cosmetics 57.5% to $1.44 billion. By destination, shipments to the United States jumped 185.8% to $24.9 billion, led by chips, computers and the electrical equipment that goes into data centres, and exports to China rose 133.6% to $26.98 billion, the fifth month in a row above $20 billion.
The headline needs two footnotes. The first is the calendar. The Chuseok holiday fell in early October last year and in late September this year, so October 2025 had fewer working days and makes a low base for comparison. The second is the month before. In September exports reached $120.9 billion and chip exports a record $60.3 billion, so October's "record" is a record for October; on a monthly basis both totals fell, by about 5% and 6.5%. With fewer working days in September this year because of the holiday, that dip is worth watching rather than worrying about.
Investors use these numbers because nothing else arrives as early. Korea is the home of Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, the two largest makers of memory chips, and its trade data come out on the first day of the following month, weeks before most countries or companies report. A 259% rise in chip exports is mostly a story about prices: memory has become one of the tightest parts of the AI supply chain, and SK Hynix reported last week an operating margin of about 80%. The iShares MSCI South Korea ETF fell 5.5% to $152.89 on Friday in the global chip sell-off that followed Intel's forecast.
Industry Minister Kim Jung-kwan said the global trade environment "remains uncertain", pointing to protectionism, shifting supply chains and tensions in the Middle East. The more immediate question for markets is whether the chip numbers hold up when the first-ten-days figure for November arrives from customs on November 11. A run of $55 billion to $60 billion a month in chips would support the view that last week's sell-off in semiconductor stocks priced a slowdown the shipments do not yet show.