South Korea’s exports nearly double as AI chip demand accelerates

South Korea’s exports rose 93.7% from a year earlier in October to $115.3 billion, the fastest increase in more than five decades. The headline number was helped by an unusually favorable comparison: October had more working days than the same month last year because the Chuseok holiday fell at a different time. But the underlying driver was clear—semiconductor exports jumped 259.4% to $56.4 billion as technology companies kept buying the chips and memory needed to build AI data centers. For a country whose trade figures are closely watched as an early signal of global manufacturing demand, the data show that the AI investment boom is still flowing through to real orders, not just technology-company valuations.