Data from Saturday shows that South Korea's exports unexpectedly grew in October due to strong demand for chips and ships, although companies remain cautious amid U.S. tariff policies casting a shadow over the global outlook.
South Korea's exports in October increased by 3.6% compared to the same period last year, reaching $59.57 billion, while economists had predicted a decline of 0.2%.
The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy of South Korea stated in a statement that semiconductor exports grew by 25.4% year-on-year, higher than the 22.1% increase in September, mainly driven by strong demand for high-capacity, high-value memory chips such as high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for servers and DDR5, which pushed prices up.
Ship sales also surged by 131.2% year-on-year, while petrochemical product sales grew by 12.7% year-on-year.
Analysts believe that the trade agreement finalized between Washington and Seoul, which lowered tariffs on cars and auto parts to 15%, has reduced uncertainties in the trade environment, leading to a gradual improvement in exports.
Park Sang-hyun, an economist at iM Securities in Seoul, stated, "Driven by factors such as soaring semiconductor prices, exports are expected to remain strong in the fourth quarter."
"Considering the strong semiconductor exports and daily export volumes, the export situation remains robust."
Imports in October fell by 1.5% to $53.52 billion.
The trade surplus in October was $6.06 billion, down from $9.53 billion in September. $BTC
