{"id":94019,"topic":"ai","source":"Al Jazeera","title":"South Korea’s exports hit record high on AI boom - Al Jazeera","url":"https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/10/1/south-koreas-exports-hit-record-high-on-ai-boom","url_hash":"b7ee64441ccd99f5cd17c3efa947cc44f805e00c","author":"","summary":"South Korea’s exports hit record high on AI boom Al Jazeera","content":"South Korea’s exports have surged to a monthly record amid explosive demand for chips used to power artificial intelligence.\nExports jumped 83.5 percent year-on-year to $120.9bn in September, eclipsing the previous monthly record of $102.25bn set in June, preliminary customs figures showed on Thursday.\nRecommended Stories\nlist of 4 items- list 1 of 4Trump amazed that an ‘Israeli plumber’ helped land Flydubai flight\n- list 2 of 4Iran parades Shahed drones through capital\n- list 3 of 4Passengers tell of ‘nightmare’ onboard diverted Flydubai flight\n- list 4 of 4Iraq celebrates Sovereignty Day as US troops complete withdrawal\nChip shipments accounted for nearly half of exports, soaring more than 260 percent to $60.3bn, according to data from the Korea Customs Service.\nTotal exports from January through September hit $814.5bn, exceeding those for all of 2025, when exports reached a record $709.7bn.\nDuring the first nine months of the year, the country recorded a trade surplus of $49.85bn.\n“This is a valuable achievement that once again demonstrates the strength of our industries and companies, and is thanks to the sweat and efforts of our entrepreneurs who have competed fiercely in the global market,” said Kim Jeong-kwan, South Korea’s minister for trade and industry, in a statement.\n“While we expect to achieve $1 trillion in annual exports, the strengthening of global protectionism and tensions in the Middle East remain major variables affecting our exports,” Kim said.\nSouth Korea’s economy has been running red-hot this year amid a global shortage of memory chips used in AI.\nAsia’s fourth-largest economy is home to one of the world’s largest semiconductor industries, led by top memory chip makers SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics.\nSK Hynix and Samsung Electronics together control roughly 80 percent of the global market for high-bandwidth memory and 60 percent of the market for dynamic random-access memory, according to Counterpoint Research.\nSouth Korea’s nominal gross domestic product (GDP) growth hit a five-decade high in the April-June quarter, skyrocketing 26.4 percent year-on-year.\nSouth Korea’s Ministry of Finance and Economy has forecast real GDP to grow 3 percent in 2026, which would be the strongest performance since 2017, excluding the outlier years of the COVID-19 pandemic.\nThe AI boom has also propelled the country’s stock market into the ranks of the best-performing bourses this year, with the benchmark Kospi rising nearly 60 percent.","image_url":"https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/AFP__20191121__1MF9NT__v1__MidRes__SkoreaEconomyTelecommunicationLabourSamsung-1790819092_8253fb-1790824681.jpg?resize=1200%2C630&quality=80","lang":"en","published_at":"2026-10-01T04:24:48+00:00","fetched_at":"2026-10-01T08:15:05+00:00","status":"read","starred":0,"extract_state":"ok","summary_auto":"South Korea’s exports have surged to a monthly record amid explosive demand for chips used to power artificial intelligence. 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Exports jumped 83.5 percent year-on-year to $120.9bn in September, eclipsing the previous monthly record of $102.25bn set in June, preliminary customs figures showed on Thursday.","extraction":{"state":"ok","confidence":0.9,"error":null,"explanation":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 2486 characters.","diagnostics_url":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/10/1/south-koreas-exports-hit-record-high-on-ai-boom","quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 2486 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":2486,"summary_length":303,"usable_text_length":2486,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":2486,"summary_length":303}}},"display_formats":["compact","card","full","digest_section","json"]},"daily_stack_record":{"title":"South Korea’s exports hit record high on AI boom - Al Jazeera","url":"https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/10/1/south-koreas-exports-hit-record-high-on-ai-boom","summary":"South Korea’s exports have surged to a monthly record amid explosive demand for chips used to power artificial intelligence. Exports jumped 83.5 percent year-on-year to $120.9bn in September, eclipsing the previous monthly record of $102.25bn set in June, preliminary customs figures showed on Thursday.","source":"Al Jazeera","date":"2026-10-01T04:24:48+00:00","content":"South Korea’s exports have surged to a monthly record amid explosive demand for chips used to power artificial intelligence.\nExports jumped 83.5 percent year-on-year to $120.9bn in September, eclipsing the previous monthly record of $102.25bn set in June, preliminary customs figures showed on Thursday.\nRecommended Stories\nlist of 4 items- list 1 of 4Trump amazed that an ‘Israeli plumber’ helped land Flydubai flight\n- list 2 of 4Iran parades Shahed drones through capital\n- list 3 of 4Passengers tell of ‘nightmare’ onboard diverted Flydubai flight\n- list 4 of 4Iraq celebrates Sovereignty Day as US troops complete withdrawal\nChip shipments accounted for nearly half of exports, soaring more than 260 percent to $60.3bn, according to data from the Korea Customs Service.\nTotal exports from January through September hit $814.5bn, exceeding those for all of 2025, when exports reached a record $709.7bn.\nDuring the first nine months of the year, the country recorded a trade surplus of $49.85bn.\n“This is a valuable achievement that once again demonstrates the strength of our industries and companies, and is thanks to the sweat and efforts of our entrepreneurs who have competed fiercely in the global market,” said Kim Jeong-kwan, South Korea’s minister for trade and industry, in a statement.\n“While we expect to achieve $1 trillion in annual exports, the strengthening of global protectionism and tensions in the Middle East remain major variables affecting our exports,” Kim said.\nSouth Korea’s economy has been running red-hot this year amid a global shortage of memory chips used in AI.\nAsia’s fourth-largest economy is home to one of the world’s largest semiconductor industries, led by top memory chip makers SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics.\nSK Hynix and Samsung Electronics together control roughly 80 percent of the global market for high-bandwidth memory and 60 percent of the market for dynamic random-access memory, according to Counterpoint Research.\nSouth Korea’s nominal gross domestic product (GDP) growth hit a five-decade high in the April-June quarter, skyrocketing 26.4 percent year-on-year.\nSouth Korea’s Ministry of Finance and Economy has forecast real GDP to grow 3 percent in 2026, which would be the strongest performance since 2017, excluding the outlier years of the COVID-19 pandemic.\nThe AI boom has also propelled the country’s stock market into the ranks of the best-performing bourses this year, with the benchmark Kospi rising nearly 60 percent.","confidence":0.9,"diagnostics_url":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/10/1/south-koreas-exports-hit-record-high-on-ai-boom","quality_bucket":"high","failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"quality_reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 2486 characters.","quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 2486 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":2486,"summary_length":303,"usable_text_length":2486,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":2486,"summary_length":303}},"tags":[]},"fallback_formats":["markdown","json","html"],"actions":{"read":"/item/94019","export_markdown":"/api/items/94019/export?format=markdown","export_json":"/api/items/94019/export?format=json","diagnose":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/10/1/south-koreas-exports-hit-record-high-on-ai-boom"},"formats":{"full":{"id":94019,"title":"South Korea’s exports hit record high on AI boom - Al Jazeera","url":"https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/10/1/south-koreas-exports-hit-record-high-on-ai-boom","source":"Al Jazeera","author":null,"published_at":"2026-10-01T04:24:48+00:00","locale":"en","topic":"ai","tags":[],"excerpt":"South Korea’s exports have surged to a monthly record amid explosive demand for chips used to power artificial intelligence. Exports jumped 83.5 percent year-on-year to $120.9bn in September, eclipsing the previous monthly record of $102.25bn set in June, preliminary customs figures showed on Thursday.","full_text":"South Korea’s exports have surged to a monthly record amid explosive demand for chips used to power artificial intelligence.\nExports jumped 83.5 percent year-on-year to $120.9bn in September, eclipsing the previous monthly record of $102.25bn set in June, preliminary customs figures showed on Thursday.\nRecommended Stories\nlist of 4 items- list 1 of 4Trump amazed that an ‘Israeli plumber’ helped land Flydubai flight\n- list 2 of 4Iran parades Shahed drones through capital\n- list 3 of 4Passengers tell of ‘nightmare’ onboard diverted Flydubai flight\n- list 4 of 4Iraq celebrates Sovereignty Day as US troops complete withdrawal\nChip shipments accounted for nearly half of exports, soaring more than 260 percent to $60.3bn, according to data from the Korea Customs Service.\nTotal exports from 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Exports jumped 83.5 percent year-on-year to $120.9bn in September, eclipsing the previous monthly record of $102.25bn set in June, preliminary customs figures showed on Thursday.","source":"Al Jazeera","date":"2026-10-01T04:24:48+00:00","content":"South Korea’s exports have surged to a monthly record amid explosive demand for chips used to power artificial intelligence.\nExports jumped 83.5 percent year-on-year to $120.9bn in September, eclipsing the previous monthly record of $102.25bn set in June, preliminary customs figures showed on Thursday.\nRecommended Stories\nlist of 4 items- list 1 of 4Trump amazed that an ‘Israeli plumber’ helped land Flydubai flight\n- list 2 of 4Iran parades Shahed drones through capital\n- list 3 of 4Passengers tell of ‘nightmare’ onboard diverted Flydubai flight\n- list 4 of 4Iraq celebrates Sovereignty Day as US troops complete withdrawal\nChip shipments accounted for nearly half of exports, soaring more than 260 percent to $60.3bn, according to data from the Korea Customs Service.\nTotal exports from January through September hit $814.5bn, exceeding those for all of 2025, when exports reached a record $709.7bn.\nDuring the first nine months of the year, the country recorded a trade surplus of $49.85bn.\n“This is a valuable achievement that once again demonstrates the strength of our industries and companies, and is thanks to the sweat and efforts of our entrepreneurs who have competed fiercely in the global market,” said Kim Jeong-kwan, South Korea’s minister for trade and industry, in a statement.\n“While we expect to achieve $1 trillion in annual exports, the strengthening of global protectionism and tensions in the Middle East remain major variables affecting our exports,” Kim said.\nSouth Korea’s economy has been running red-hot this year amid a global shortage of memory chips used in AI.\nAsia’s fourth-largest economy is home to one of the world’s largest semiconductor industries, led by top memory chip makers SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics.\nSK Hynix and Samsung Electronics together control roughly 80 percent of the global market for high-bandwidth memory and 60 percent of the market for dynamic random-access memory, according to Counterpoint Research.\nSouth Korea’s nominal gross domestic product (GDP) growth hit a five-decade high in the April-June quarter, skyrocketing 26.4 percent year-on-year.\nSouth Korea’s Ministry of Finance and Economy has forecast real GDP to grow 3 percent in 2026, which would be the strongest performance since 2017, excluding the outlier years of the COVID-19 pandemic.\nThe AI boom has also propelled the country’s stock market into the ranks of the best-performing bourses this year, with the benchmark Kospi rising nearly 60 percent.","confidence":0.9,"diagnostics_url":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/10/1/south-koreas-exports-hit-record-high-on-ai-boom","quality_bucket":"high","failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"quality_reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 2486 characters.","quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 2486 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":2486,"summary_length":303,"usable_text_length":2486,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":2486,"summary_length":303}},"tags":[],"format_contract_version":"news_item_formats.v1"}}}