South Korea's stock market suffered its worst single-day loss on record. On July 28, 2026, the benchmark KOSPI — the Korea Composite Stock Price Index — fell 10.84%, according to The New Indian Express, which reported the plunge followed a selloff in artificial intelligence stocks.
The New Indian Express frames its account around a counterintuitive argument: despite the AI selloff that preceded the drop, AI "wasn't the real story" behind the crash. The outlet's explainer, also carried in aggregated form via Google News, positions the AI rout as the trigger visible on the surface rather than the underlying cause.
Beyond those points, the available reporting is thin. The source items do not specify what the publication identifies as the actual driver, nor do they detail the scale of losses in won or dollars, the response from Korean regulators or the Bank of Korea, or how other Asian markets fared that day.
Some context on scale is worth stating plainly. A 10.84% single-day decline is severe by any measure — it means roughly a tenth of the market's value evaporating between the opening and closing bells. That it stands as the KOSPI's largest one-day fall on record puts it above every previous shock the index has absorbed, including past global financial crises.
The KOSPI is heavily weighted toward large technology and semiconductor exporters, which is why a selloff in AI-linked shares would register so sharply there. Whether that concentration explains the full extent of the fall is precisely the question the New Indian Express piece takes up.
Why it matters: when a major market posts its steepest drop ever and analysts disagree about what caused it, the disagreement itself signals that investors may be misreading where the real risk sits.