The iShares MSCI South Korea ETF (EWY) pulled in $281 million on February 12, its largest single-day inflow on record. The catalyst wasn’t some macro shift or currency play. It was one company: SK Hynix.
The memory chip giant, which accounts for roughly 23% of EWY’s total holdings, has become the gravitational center of South Korea’s investment thesis. And for global investors who want a piece of the AI semiconductor boom without navigating the complexities of buying shares on the Korea Exchange directly, this BlackRock-managed ETF has become the path of least resistance.
Why SK Hynix is driving the bus
SK Hynix is the world’s second-largest memory chip manufacturer, and its high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips have become critical infrastructure for AI training and inference workloads. That positioning has made SK Hynix one of the hottest semiconductor plays globally, and the broader Kospi index has reached record highs partly on the strength of semiconductor optimism.
With SK Hynix representing nearly a quarter of the fund’s weight, buying EWY is essentially a leveraged bet on the chipmaker with some diversification sprinkled on top.
