South Korea’s export engine keeps humming. The country is on track to post its 12th consecutive month of export growth in May, powered by an AI-fueled semiconductor boom that has turned Korean chipmakers into some of the most important companies on the planet.
To put the scale of this streak in perspective: April 2026 exports jumped 48% year-over-year to roughly $85.89B. That’s not a typo. Nearly half of that growth came from a single category, semiconductors, which surged 173.5% year-over-year to about $31.9B in April alone.
The chip boom driving everything
March 2026 was the first time semiconductor shipments from South Korea surpassed $30B in a single month. April immediately repeated the feat with $31.9B, setting a new record for that month.
Samsung Electronics and SK hynix sit at the center of this story. Both companies manufacture the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips that AI data centers consume in enormous quantities.
