# 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.

Publisher: The Quant (https://thequant.market)  
Published: 2026-10-04  
Section: trade  
Language: en  
URL: https://thequant.market/articles/korea-s-exports-hit-709-billion-semiconductors-accounted-for  
Cite as: The Quant, "Trade Audit — Korea", 2026-10-04, https://thequant.market/articles/korea-s-exports-hit-709-billion-semiconductors-accounted-for

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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.

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This is the opening of the article. The full text is at https://thequant.market/articles/korea-s-exports-hit-709-billion-semiconductors-accounted-for (a free account opens some articles, a subscription opens all). Please cite: The Quant, "Trade Audit — Korea", 2026-10-04, https://thequant.market/articles/korea-s-exports-hit-709-billion-semiconductors-accounted-for