$37.16 billion in a single month! South Korea's semiconductor exports hit a new historical high

Data shows that South Korea's semiconductor exports in might soared by 169.4% year-on-year, reaching a single-month export scale of $37.16 billion, once again setting a new historical record to a single month. This round of chip market performance is primarily driven by two factors: on one hand, leading overseas methodology companies continue to expand capital expenditures and increase the procurement and stockpiling of memory chips; on the other hand, the global supply and demand landscape to memory chips remains tight, with product prices continuing to rise. The combined increase in volume and price has pushed export performance higher. As South Korea's largest export category, the weight of semiconductors in the country's foreign trade has further increased, becoming a core pillar driving the economy.

Under the impetus of the semiconductor sector, related upstream and downstream items have simultaneously strengthened. As global artificial intelligence server construction enters a peak period and market demand is intensively released, South Korea's computer product exports were immediately driven to surge by 290.7% year-on-year. International oil prices remaining in a high range also benefited South Korea's petroleum product sales abroad, with exports of petroleum items rising by 46.6% year-on-year in the month.

However, the foreign trade sector presented a clear direction of divergence. Affected by supply chain disruptions in the Middle East and叠加 US tariff policies, South Korea's automobile exports faced pressure, falling by 5.9% year-on-year in might, becoming a major drag.

Looking at the export market structure, demand from major trading partners performed strongly. In might, South Korea's exports to its two core markets, the US and China, increased by 59.1% and 80.9% year-on-year respectively. The complete recovery in demand from these two major markets provided strong support to export development; affected by regional situations and logistics disruptions, exports to the Middle East region fell by 7.7% year-on-year.

The impressive export data was immediately reflected in the macroeconomic level. Thanks to the continued popularity of exports in advantageous categories such as semiconductors, South Korea's economic development rate last quarter hit a six-year high. Based on the strong foreign trade fundamentals, the Bank of Korea updated its economic outlook last week, significantly raising the economic development expectation to this year from the previous 2.0% to 2.6%, an increase of 0.6 percentage points. Analysis points out that the positive pull from semiconductor exports efficiently offset negative factors such as Middle East supply chain fluctuations and weakening automobile exports, becoming the core basis to this upward adjustment in economic expectations.

sector insiders generally believe that the wave of global AI computing power construction is still continuing. The market demand to memory chips and high-end chips is expected to remain high in the short term, and the boom cycle of South Korea's semiconductor exports might continue, continuing to dominate the country's foreign trade and macroeconomic trends.