South Korea’s stock market staged a dramatic comeback on Friday after one of its worst single-day drops in recent memory.
The KOSPI index fell as low as 7,300 in early trading before closing up 5.76% at 8,088.34. A circuit breaker had halted trading on Thursday when the index fell 7.89%.
SK Hynix jumped 10.88% on Friday after collapsing 14.6% the day before. Samsung Electronics rose 8.22%, partially recovering from a 9.1% drop on Thursday.
The two chipmakers are the KOSPI’s largest constituents. When they move, the index moves with them.
Reports that AI company Anthropic is in talks with Samsung to develop custom hardware added to the positive momentum on Friday.
U.S. chipmaker Micron also fell 5.5% on Thursday, closing at $975.56. It remains up over 166% for the year as memory chips stay at the center of the AI investment story.
The KOSPI is up around 92% in 2026, making it the world’s best performing major index. That compares with a 9.3% gain for the S&P 500 over the same period.
The trigger for Thursday’s drop was a report that Meta was planning to sell surplus AI computing capacity. Investors feared this meant AI infrastructure spending had peaked.
Several South Korean brokerages pushed back on that view.
Samsung Securities analyst Kim Joong-han said computing power remains in “absolute shortage” and that the entire industry, including Meta, may still be short on capacity.
Mirae Asset Securities analyst Kim Young-gun called the sell-off “a valid window for bargain buying in semiconductor stocks.”
Mirae Asset estimates global big-tech capital spending will reach $806 billion this year, up 73% from a year ago. It also expects spending to rise more than 20% again next year.
Combined order backlogs disclosed by major tech companies in Q1 totalled $2.1 trillion, up 24% from the previous quarter. Around $656 billion of that is expected to be recognized as revenue within two years.
SK Hynix also made a separate announcement this week. Its board approved a $29.4 billion follow-on share offering alongside a planned listing on the Nasdaq Global Select Market as American Depositary Receipts.
The move could widen SK Hynix’s investor base and give it greater access to U.S. capital markets. Analysts note the main risk is dilution and how the market absorbs such a large offering.
The next major test comes on July 7, when Samsung is expected to release preliminary second-quarter earnings. Those results could determine whether Friday’s rebound holds or fades.
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