South Korean Stocks Surge! SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics Jump Over 20% as AI Rally Returns Strongly

Seoul's stock market opened sharply higher on the 31st, according to CNBC. South Korea's two major chipmakers, SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics, both surged over 20%, following the strong rally in U.S. technology stocks.

At the time of reporting, SK Hynix had surged 27%, while Samsung Electronics rose approximately 20%. The South Korean KOSPI index gained over 600 points, an increase of about 11%.

This surge follows strong earnings reports from Amazon (AMZN-US) and Microsoft (MSFT-US), which reignited market optimism around AI spending.

Other South Korean tech stocks also rose, with LG Innotek up 11.2% and Seoul Semiconductor up 7.8%.

This rebound reversed the severe sell-off seen earlier in the week. Semiconductor stocks had been heavily sold off amid concerns over AI-related overvaluation and intensifying competition from Chinese memory chip makers.

The iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX-US) closed up over 8% in Thursday’s U.S. session, as investors returned to AI-related chip stocks, encouraged by the better-than-expected performance of the two U.S. tech giants’ cloud businesses.

Amazon’s stock surged over 9% in after-hours trading, as its second-quarter revenue exceeded analyst expectations, driven by continued strong growth in its cloud computing business. Microsoft closed Thursday up over 15%, as its Azure cloud business grew faster than expected, further reinforcing market confidence that AI infrastructure spending will remain robust.