South Korea's exports surge 70.9%, the fastest growth since 1978
South Korea's exports jumped 70.9% in June and topped 100 billion dollars in a single month for the first time, driven by an explosion in AI chip sales.
South Korea’s exports grew 70.9% in June compared with a year earlier — the biggest jump since 1978 — and topped 100 billion dollars in a single month for the first time. The engine has a name: semiconductors, pushed by the global race for artificial intelligence.
Why are South Korea’s exports growing so fast?
Because the world is buying chips like never before. South Korean semiconductor sales surged almost 200% to 44.8 billion dollars, with demand for high-bandwidth memory and DDR5 chips — the components that feed AI servers — pulling everything upward. Shipments to China rose more than 90% and to the United States nearly 80%, a sign that investment in AI data centres is spreading across the world’s two largest economies.
What does this have to do with Portugal?
More than it seems. When South Korea sets records selling chips, it is a thermometer for the health of the global economy and the strength of the AI cycle — the same cycle that shapes electronics prices, component availability and the pace of tech investment in Europe. An export economy accelerating like this is usually good news for world trade, which Portugal also depends on.
See also: Portugal growing above the euro-zone average. Macro data at the Bank of Korea.
By Beatriz Mota
Image: Bergmann from jawp / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
