Trade Audit — Korea

South Korea exported $709.7 billion of goods in 2025 — a record, and the first time above $700 billion — driven by a semiconductor super-cycle. Chips hit an all-time high of $173.4 billion, up 22.2% on AI data-centre demand, and accounted for 24% of everything Korea sold abroad. That product concentration is the engine of the boom and the country's central vulnerability at the same time. Korea has built a high-value-added manufacturing economy unlike the assembly hubs — but it has built it on a narrow base of memory chips, sold to a narrow set of buyers, in the middle of a US-China technology conflict.