South Korea's tech-heavy Kospi index plunged 10% on Tuesday as a wave of selling tore through global technology stocks, according to reporting from CNBC's Chloe Taylor.
The drop was led by the country's chipmaking giants. SK Hynix and Samsung dragged the index down, while European chip-equipment and semiconductor names STMicro and ASML each fell around 7%, CNBC reported. US tech stocks were also sliding in pre-market trading, following an earlier losing session for the sector on Wall Street.
Investing.com described the move as an "AI rout" that hammered the Kospi and triggered a circuit breaker — an automatic trading halt that exchanges use to slow panic selling when prices fall too far, too fast. A separate report carried by MSN framed the collapse as an "AI stock bubble" bursting, noting the index plunged 10% by the close after a sharp selloff swept the market.
The common thread across all three sources is concentration: the companies hit hardest — memory-chip makers like SK Hynix and Samsung, and equipment suppliers like ASML — are precisely the firms whose recent gains have been tied to soaring demand for artificial-intelligence hardware. When investors sour on that AI trade, those same stocks fall fastest.
The selloff was not contained to Seoul. CNBC noted broad weakness across global markets, and the MSN item raised the question of what the Kospi's collapse means for other markets, including India.
Why it matters: South Korea is home to some of the world's most important chipmakers, so a 10% single-day crash there is an early warning sign that investors may be reconsidering how much the AI boom is really worth.