Articles by Mia Park
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What is a Korean theme stock? A lighting company just became Korea's hottest chip trade.
Kumho Electric has no announced semiconductor business. Its shares rose more than tenfold in two months anyway. How Korean theme stocks, or temaju, turn a name into a rally.
Simmtech makes 70% of the boards under Nvidia's new memory modules. The stock rose 12.6% after Nvidia's earnings.
Simmtech, a substrate maker from Cheongju, closed up 12.60% after Nvidia's results and is up 27.3% in a week. It makes about 70% of the substrates for SOCAMM, the memory module in Nvidia's AI servers.
Meta (META) eyes $720 million South Korea bond sale to fund AI spending
Meta is quietly testing South Korea's bond market. It's looking at selling at least 1 trillion won ($720M) of won bonds to help fund AI, which would put a rare big foreign name in the Arirang market.
Dunamu, which owns Korea's biggest crypto exchange Upbit, is preparing an IPO, and the early signs point abroad.
Dunamu, which runs Korea's biggest crypto exchange Upbit, is preparing an IPO after a stock swap with Naver Financial. It is reviewing US accounting rules, and a Seoul listing would run into the duplicate-listing rule Korea just tightened.
China's YMTC is raising $4.9 billion to chase Samsung and SK Hynix in NAND. It just passed Kioxia to become the world's third-largest producer
China's top NAND maker YMTC filed to raise about $4.9 billion and just passed Kioxia into third place in the market. The threat to Samsung and SK Hynix is real, but it sits in the cheaper part of the memory business.
A Trump memecoin outtraded Bitcoin on Korea's biggest crypto exchange last weekend. Bitcoin finished fourth.
Korean money left a cooling stock market for crypto last week, and daily trading rose 8.7 times in five days. On Upbit, a Trump memecoin and XRP both traded more than bitcoin, which finished fourth.
Eli Lilly-backed BreezeBio licensed its tech to Genentech for up to $629 million. Its next stop is Kosdaq, not Nasdaq.
BreezeBio, a California biotech backed by Eli Lilly and licensed to Genentech, wants to list on Korea's Kosdaq instead of Nasdaq. It is one of four foreign companies suddenly headed the same way.
Why Samsung can't match SK Hynix's massive buyback without forcing its insurers to sell
Samsung Life Insurance and Samsung Fire & Marine together own about 10% of Samsung Electronics' common stock, the exact ceiling set by a Korean banking law. That's the real reason Samsung's record payout leaned on dividends instead of the stock buyback and cancellation SK Hynix just did.
Three days after announcing its record payout, Samsung fell as much as 7.3% Monday morning.
Samsung Electronics fell as much as 7.3% in Seoul trading Monday, three trading days after announcing a record 90 to 110 trillion won ($65.1B to $79.6B USD) payout. SK Hynix, which raised its own payout target the same week, held close to flat.
SK Hynix stock costs $1,248 a share in Korea. Will it follow Samsung with a split?
SK Hynix (SKHY) shares closed at 1.73 million won ($1,248) on Friday. Chairman Chey Tae-won says he would consider a split if enough people ask, though the company's own CEO has downplayed the idea.
Korea's Kakao rose 3.48% on a rumor it would split in two. It fell 7.49% when the terms landed.
Kakao's board approved splitting the company into Kakao AI and Kakao X on August 21, 2026, and shareholders vote on it December 17. The market's first answer was to sell: Kakao closed down 7.49% at 35,800 won after a 30-minute trading halt.
Korean investors poured $85.6M into Roundhill Memory ETF (DRAM) in one week. The fund already holds Samsung and SK Hynix.
Korean retail investors bought $85.61 million of the Roundhill Memory ETF in a single week, their second-biggest US purchase after Alphabet. The fund is 26.19% Samsung Electronics and 21.61% SK Hynix, two stocks they can buy at home in won.
A Korean investor cashed out a savings account for chip stocks in July and lost close to half. Their parents' retirement money went into the same funds.
A 35-year-old cashed out a 100 million won savings account for Korean chip stocks in early July and has about 60 million won left. That was savings, not borrowed money. Korean household credit passed 2,000 trillion won for the first time, with loans outside mortgages growing faster than home loans.
Samsung promised shareholders $79 billion. Investors expected $108 billion.
Samsung Electronics approved the largest shareholder return in Korean corporate history on Friday, up to 110 trillion won. The market had been told to expect 150 trillion, and the stock traded lower after the close while Samsung's preferred shares rose 8.26%.
Four Korean stocks hit their 30% daily limit on Moderna's cancer-vaccine trial win. Three actually work in mRNA, and the fourth makes semiconductor equipment.
Somagen, Naibec, Genexine and Samyang Biopharm all hit Korea's 30% daily limit on Moderna's cancer-vaccine trial win, and each has a disclosed mRNA business behind it, except one. Entutech hit the same limit riding a five-year-old rumor. It makes semiconductor equipment.
Kospi rebounds 5.89% after worst day in weeks as SK Hynix announces $28.6 billion buyback
The Kospi fell 5.80% on Wednesday, its worst day in weeks, then rose 5.89% the next day. SK Hynix's $28.6 billion buyback and easing global interest rates drove one of its sharpest two-day reversals this year.
Samsung shareholders want a $32.5 billion buyback, and they're moving to force a vote on it. SK Hynix just committed $28.6 billion to the same idea.
A shareholder group called ACT wants Samsung to buy back and cancel 45.5 trillion won ($32.5 billion), three days before SK Hynix approved its own 40 trillion won buyback, and is pushing to force a shareholder vote on it.
SK Hynix will buy back 40 trillion won of stock and cancel all of it. The board voted hours after the shares fell 9.75%.
SK Hynix approved a 40 trillion won ($28.6 billion) buyback and said it will cancel every share, the largest buyback and cancellation by a Korean listed company, hours after its stock fell 9.75 percent in Seoul.
SK Hynix’s (SKHY) HBM4 may cost Nvidia (NVDA) nearly twice as much as HBM3E. Samsung wants the same deal.
Two research firms estimate SK Hynix's HBM4 costs Nvidia about twice as much per gigabyte as HBM3E. SK Hynix has not confirmed the number, and Samsung Electronics is chasing the same price for its own HBM4.
Foreigners drove the Kospi to a record high on Samsung and SK Hynix. Local institutions sold the whole gain the same day.
The Kospi set a record high on Aug 18 as foreign buyers pushed Samsung and SK Hynix higher, then Korean institutions sold 1.19 trillion won into the rally and the index closed down 1.55 percent.
Foreigners made money in Korea's market all year. The locals sold them the rebound.
Korean individuals bought the market all the way down and sold as it climbed back toward 7,000. Foreigners bought almost all of that rebound, in a year when the foreign money kept winning and the local crowd kept losing.
Korea is selling more chips than ever, but the won won't strengthen. The Bank of Korea says 70% of the pressure is Koreans moving money abroad.
Korea is selling more chips than ever and still runs a big trade surplus, but the won won't strengthen. The Bank of Korea says about 70% of the pressure comes from Koreans themselves, the pension fund and retail investors moving record amounts into foreign stocks.
Samsung could return $141 billion a year to shareholders as SK Hynix weighs $70 billion payout
The Kospi climbed back near 7,000 last week, led by Samsung and SK Hynix. Now the market's waiting on how much cash each will return to shareholders, with estimates as high as $141 billion for Samsung and $70 billion for SK Hynix.
The Kospi rebounded 11%. Korea's leveraged investors did not.
The Kospi rose about 11% in a week, but the rebound came too late for the investors who bet on Samsung and SK Hynix leverage with borrowed money, and it does little for the ones still holding those funds.