South Korea’s KOSPI Extends Decline to 9%, Last at 5,467.66

The scale of this move is the story: a 9% index decline is not routine profit-taking, and the fact that Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix — the two names that anchor the KOSPI's semiconductor weighting — each fell more than 11% points to a concentrated, tech-led unwind rather than broad-based selling. That matters because South Korea's benchmark is unusually exposed to memory-chip demand, so its moves are read as a proxy for global semiconductor sentiment, not just local risk appetite. Whether the selling stays confined to those heavyweights or spreads across the wider index is the open question worth watching.