00:02You're listening to AI Prism from Seoul Economic Daily.
00:30And Korean-listed companies just posted a 254% jump in first-half operating profit.
00:36It's Thursday, August 20th.
00:39Here's why global investors are paying attention to Korea today.
00:43Korea's currency and equity markets are sending mixed signals this week,
00:48decoupling from the textbook relationship between U.S. yields and the dollar.
00:53Rising U.S. fiscal deficits, not just rising yields,
00:56are being read by markets as a risk premium rather than a return signal,
01:01which is helping non-dollar currencies like the won.
01:04At the same time, record Korean corporate earnings and a supply-chain-driven foundry story
01:10are giving investors reasons to look past the short-term semiconductor sell-off.
01:15Here's what the numbers show.
01:17The Korean won closed at 1,397.7 won per dollar on August 19th,
01:24its strongest level in about 10 months.
01:26As exporters and offshore investors sold dollars.
01:31The U.S. 30-year Treasury yield hit 5.33%
01:35and the 10-year reached 4.73%,
01:38both the highest since 2007,
01:41driven by a fiscal 2026 deficit of $1.799 trillion
01:46that has already topped last year's full-year total.
01:50Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix still fell 7.82% and 9.75% on August 19th,
01:59after the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index dropped nearly 5% overnight
02:04on renewed doubts about AI infrastructure spending.
02:08SK Hynix's board approved a 40.043 trillion won buyback and cancellation,
02:15part of a plan to lift total shareholder returns toward 100 trillion won this year.
02:21Cosby-listed companies posted 388.15 trillion won in combined first-half operating profit,
02:29up 254.15% year-on-year,
02:33with non-memory companies still growing profit more than 75%,
02:37even excluding Samsung and SK Hynix.
02:40Samsung also raised foundry order prices by up to 15% in July,
02:46as TSMC's advanced node capacity hits a ceiling.
02:50China's approval of NVIDIA H200 imports for ByteDance and Tencent
02:54adds a new cross-border variable for chip demand forecasting into year-end.
02:59So what does this mean for global investors weighing exposure to Korea?
03:03Earlier, we said the won broke below 1,400 even as U.S. yields hit multi-decade highs.
03:11That decoupling suggests markets are pricing U.S. fiscal risk
03:15as much as they're pricing Korean fundamentals,
03:18which matters for currency-hedging decisions.
03:20The semiconductor sell-off looks more like a rate-driven valuation reset than a demand problem,
03:26given record first-half profit growth and SK Hynix's aggressive capital return plan.
03:31Samsung's foundry pricing power and China's chip import easing
03:36are both worth tracking as they reshape the regional supply chain investors are underwriting.
03:41Watch whether USD to KRW stabilizes near 1,400
03:46or extends toward the 1,300s by year-end, as some economists project.
03:52Watch SK Hynix's follow-up dividend and buyback announcement
03:56expected around its October Q3 results.
03:59Watch further Chinese approvals for NVIDIA H200 imports
04:03and their effect on global chip demand.
04:06That's today's AI Prism, Global Investors.
04:09This episode was produced with AI assistance based on Seoul Economic Daily reporting
04:14and reviewed by a human editor.
04:16AI Prism is a Juan Ifra award-winning series.
04:20We'll be back tomorrow.
04:21You've been listening to AI Prism from Seoul Economic Daily.
04:24We'll be back tomorrow.
04:26You're listening to AI Prism.
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