South Korea’s Exports Nearly Double in October to $115.3 Billion as AI Chip Sales Surge

Photo: Niels Johannes, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (file photo, 2006). Container cranes at a terminal in the port of Busan.

South Korea’s October exports rose 93.7% from a year earlier to $115.28 billion, the trade ministry said Sunday, Nov. 1, as global spending on artificial intelligence data centers pushed chip shipments to more than three times their year-earlier level. Shipments to the United States nearly tripled, to $24.9 billion.

Reuters said the gain was the steepest since January 1974 and came in just above the 93.2% median forecast in its poll of economists. The ministry, which Yonhap and Reuters call the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources, said it was the second month in a row with exports above $110 billion and a surplus above $40 billion.

A holiday shift inflates the comparison

The size of the jump is partly a calendar effect. The Chuseok harvest holiday fell in October last year but in September this year, so October 2026 had more working days than October 2025. Adjusted for working days, average daily exports rose 76% to $5.24 billion, the ministry said. That is a smaller increase, but it is still the second-highest daily average on the ministry’s books.

October is also not the biggest month on record. In the ministry’s own ranking, September 2026 holds first place at $121.1 billion, October is second and June 2026 is third at $102.0 billion. Imports climbed 36.0% to $72.78 billion, which Reuters said was the largest annual increase since January 2022, and the $42.50 billion surplus was smaller than September’s record $49.97 billion.

Chips and servers carry the month

Semiconductor exports reached $56.44 billion, up 259.4%. The ministry said global big-tech companies kept investing in AI facilities, which held chip prices and volumes high. The figure trails only September’s $60.3 billion. Its data show the fixed contract price of a 16-gigabit DDR5 memory chip climbing from $40.00 in June to $50.00 in October, while 128-gigabit NAND flash rose from $28.80 to $30.60.

Computer exports, mostly servers and the solid-state drives that go into them, jumped 496.6% to $5.85 billion. Electrical equipment hit an all-time monthly high of $1.99 billion, up 74.0%, which the ministry tied to demand for transformers, wires and cables for AI data centers. Outside chips, exports grew 34%.

Eighteen of the 20 main product groups rose. Cars gained 18.1% to $6.55 billion, the best October on record, helped by hybrid sales and the extra working days. Cosmetics rose 57.5% to $1.44 billion, also an October high. Ships were the biggest decliner, falling 43.6% to $2.64 billion because a $2.47 billion offshore-plant shipment inflated the year-earlier figure.

Why the U.S. numbers matter

The 185.8% rise in shipments to the United States came from chips, computers and electrical equipment tied to AI, plus cars and steel, the ministry said. In the first 25 days of October alone, Korean chip sales to the U.S. rose 497% and computer sales 816%, the release showed. For the U.S. side of the AI hardware build-out, see TBR’s map of new U.S. chip plants.

China remained the largest market at $26.98 billion, up 133.6% and above $20 billion for a fifth straight month. Exports to Southeast Asia rose 128.0% to $21.33 billion, the most ever sent to the region in a month, and exports to the European Union climbed 56.4% to $8.10 billion, an 11th straight monthly gain.

What the data shows

By TBR’s calculation from the ministry’s figures, chips made up about 49% of everything South Korea sold abroad in October. The three biggest markets, China, the United States and Southeast Asia, together took $73.2 billion, or about 64% of the total. The surplus was $36.5 billion larger than a year earlier, according to the ministry.

Some lines show the strain of high energy costs. Petroleum product exports rose 80.0% in value but fell 7.5% in volume, and crude oil import volume fell 6.3% even as the bill rose 51.9% to $10.7 billion. The ministry cited a Dubai crude price of $110.70 a barrel, up 70.4%, and supply uncertainty in the Middle East. Exports to the Middle East grew 11.0%, which the ministry put down to the extra working days despite difficulties passing through the Strait of Hormuz, a route whose war-risk insurance costs have climbed this year.

Source: Korea’s trade ministry, Nov. 1, 2026.

Next: the $1 trillion mark

Exports for January through October totaled $930 billion, up 60.6% and the first time a 10-month total has passed $900 billion. The cumulative surplus was $294.9 billion. The ministry said the country needs about $70 billion more to reach $1 trillion for the year. Reuters said only the United States, China and Germany have hit that level.

“With exports continuing solid growth of more than $110 billion in October, it is becoming certain that annual exports of $1 trillion will be reached within November,” Trade Minister Kim Jung-kwan said, as translated by Reuters. In the same release, Kim said many small and mid-sized exporters are still struggling with major economies putting their own industries first, supply chains being rearranged and instability in the Middle East. He said the government would work to spread the export gains to those companies.

The figures follow September data showing South Korea’s industrial output jumped 3%, also led by chips.

Sources

• South Korea trade ministry: October 2026 exports and imports (Korean press release)
• Reuters via Investing.com: South Korea exports nearly double in October on AI investment boom
• Yonhap: S. Korea’s monthly exports hit US$115.3 bln in Oct. on strong chip sales
• The Asia Business Daily: Cumulative exports top $930 billion through October

Additional sources

• Chart data: trade ministry tables for exports by product and destination, October 2026. Shipping records on ImportGenius were not used; this story relies on official aggregate trade data.