Key points
- Korea's best 20-day export stretch on record
- Chips were nearly half of everything shipped
- China and US sales both more than doubled
Korea shipped more exports in the first 20 days of September than it ever has over the same stretch of a month. Exports reached $71.4 billion, up 78% from a year earlier, the Korea Customs Service said Monday.
Chips were nearly half of it. Semiconductor exports came to $34.1 billion, up 259% from a year ago, and made up 47.8% of everything Korea shipped overseas. A year earlier, chips were less than one-quarter of the total.
The headline number understates the pace. There were 15.5 working days in this year's period, compared with 16.5 a year earlier. On a working-day basis, exports rose nearly 90%.
The surge reflects the memory market's strength this year. Cloud companies are spending heavily on AI infrastructure, which has increased demand for memory chips. Samsung and SK Hynix supply most of the world's high-bandwidth memory, the memory that sits alongside AI chips.
Two markets pulled the hardest. Exports to China rose 114%, and exports to the United States rose 118%. China, the United States and Vietnam together took about half of everything Korea shipped.
The previous record was $61.7 billion, set in June. Imports rose 27% to $48.4 billion, leaving a trade surplus of $23 billion.
This has been building all summer. In the first 20 days of July, chip exports were already up 41%, and the memory upturn has only picked up speed since. Prices say the same thing, with some buyers paying several times the contract rate for HBM they did not lock in early. The figures come from the Korea Customs Service, as Herald Business (헤럴드경제) reported.
Meanwhile, the numbers for the full month arrive at the start of October. If the last ten days hold anywhere near this pace, September will be Korea's strongest export month yet.
