Daily Woody | Jul 22, 2026 — Korea's exports jump 52% on chips, and slip 11% from June
South Korea shipped $54.9 billion abroad in the first 20 days of July, up 52.3 percent from a year earlier and the largest figure ever recorded for that stretch of any July, the Korea Customs Service reported Tuesday. The previous high was $36.9 billion in 2024.
Semiconductors carried the gain. Chip exports reached $22.1 billion, roughly triple the year-earlier figure, and accounted for 40.3 percent of everything Korea sold overseas — up 18.4 percentage points in twelve months. Petroleum products rose 33.4 percent and ships 70.8 percent. Cars went the other way, falling 10.6 percent to $3.24 billion.
Imports climbed 20 percent to $42.7 billion, leaving a surplus of $12.2 billion. Energy imports, covering crude, gas and coal, rose 27.4 percent over a stretch in which the Middle East conflict also pushed prices higher.
The 52.3 percent is measured against July 2025, when the chip cycle had not yet turned. Set the same 20 days against last month instead and exports are down 11.3 percent from June's $61.9 billion, with average daily shipments off 8.2 percent. Both readings are true. Only one of them tells you which direction the cycle is pointing right now.
That second reading is the one Seoul's stock market has been trading on. The KOSPI has fallen 28.51 percent from its June 22 peak through July 20, the steepest drawdown among major global indices, even as the export numbers kept setting records. When two of every five export dollars come from one product category, the record and the drawdown are the same fact viewed from different ends. The 10.6 percent drop in car exports, printed on the same customs table, is the part of the economy that never joined the boom.
Samsung Electronics said Tuesday it has created a Robotics eXperience division reporting directly to co-chief executive Roh Tae-moon, who also runs the Device eXperience unit. The company folded its scattered robotics teams into it, making the change outside its regular year-end reorganization in a one-off move devoted to robotics alone.
Lee Dong-gun, who led robotics strategy at Hyundai Motor Group including oversight of Boston Dynamics, heads the strategy team. Samsung will build a data factory at its Gumi plant, open research hubs in the United States, China and Japan, and expand work with Rainbow Robotics, the humanoid developer it took a 35 percent stake in at the end of 2024.
The Seoul Central District Court fined Mayor Oh Se-hoon 10 million won (about $6,800) on Wednesday for violating the Political Funds Act, and ordered forfeiture of 21 million won (about $14,000). The court found Oh commissioned five opinion polls from political broker Myung Tae-kyun before the 2021 by-election and had a longtime supporter cover the cost.
Oh, re-elected to a fifth term last month, said he would appeal. The special counsel that brought the case, a separate team from the one questioning Kim Keon-hee this week, had sought 18 months in prison.
Under Korean law, an elected official loses office once a Political Funds Act conviction carrying a fine of 1 million won or more becomes final. The threshold is roughly $680. That is why a penalty smaller than a month's rent in Seoul can end the mayoralty of the capital.
President Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed General Oleksandr Syrskyi as commander-in-chief on Tuesday and named Mykhailo Drapatyi, 43, to replace him. The decision followed six days of demonstrations in Kyiv and other cities. Zelensky had removed Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, 35, the week before; Fedorov had clashed with Syrskyi over technology and recruitment.
Zelensky said the appointment was meant to reset the defence against Russia. It was his second reversal under street pressure, after protests last summer forced him to undo a law weakening Ukraine's anti-corruption bodies.
The same day in Geneva, the UN human rights monitoring mission reported 1,396 civilians killed and 7,978 wounded in Ukraine in the first half of 2026, a 37 percent rise from a year earlier.
Elections are suspended and martial law is in force. That leaves the street as one of the few channels open to Ukrainian opinion, and what the crowds asked for was an accounting for losses. The casualty figure released the same day — up 37 percent in a year — is the arithmetic behind that demand. Zelensky has now conceded twice, and each concession makes the next one easier to organise.
None of it moves the front line. US-brokered talks on ending the war remain stalled, and Washington's attention has shifted south. The three stories on this page share that geometry: American aircraft struck Iran for an eleventh night, oil rose on the escalation, and the yen fell to its weakest level since 1986 as money moved into dollars. Ukraine changed its high command outside the frame of all of it.
US Central Command said it began an eleventh consecutive night of strikes on Iranian military targets on Tuesday evening Washington time, describing the campaign as an effort to degrade Iran's ability to threaten merchant shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
Iranian outlets Fars and Tasnim reported explosions in Bushehr and Sirik in the south, Mahshahr in the southwest, and Tabriz in the northwest, with air defences active in parts of the northeast. Al Jazeera noted that a strike on Tabriz would fall outside the pattern of the campaign so far, which has concentrated on the south and the strait.
The campaign started earlier than that count suggests. Iran attacked three merchant vessels near Hormuz on July 6 and 7; the US struck roughly 80 Iranian targets on July 7 and about 90 on July 9. The July 11 raid, which Central Command put at some 140 targets, was the month's third and followed a separate attack on a single container ship. The consecutive-night tally runs from that date.
The yen fell as far as 163.24 per dollar in New York on Tuesday, a level last seen in December 1986. The currency had traded in a narrow band between 161 and the mid-162s for two weeks before breaking through the July 1 low of 162.84, after which stop-loss selling carried it into the 163s.
Traders attributed the move to demand for dollars as the Middle East escalated, compounded by the effect of higher oil prices on Japan's trade balance. Tokyo spent roughly 11.7 trillion yen buying yen over a month starting in late April without changing the trend. Since the US-Iran fighting resumed two weeks ago, the yen has been the weakest of the G10 currencies.
Kim Keon-hee, wife of former president Yoon Suk-yeol, appeared before special counsel Kwon Chang-young's team in Gwacheon on Wednesday morning over the 2022 relocation of the presidential residence. It was her first questioning by this team since it began work on February 25.
Kim is already in custody while standing trial in several bribery and corruption cases, and arrived in a justice ministry transport van. She had postponed two earlier summonses on health grounds. Investigators suspect that 21 Gram, an interior design firm without a general construction licence, won the residence contract through her influence in exchange for gifts including a Dior jacket. A lawyer for Kim dismissed the accusations as one-sided before entering the building.
A Korean special counsel is a temporary prosecutor's office created by legislation for a defined set of allegations, with a fixed deadline. Kwon's team is the second such body assembled to finish work three earlier special counsels left unresolved, covering insurrection, corruption and influence-peddling under the Yoon administration.
A suspect held by the state postponed questioning twice and the state waited. Much of this investigation runs on appearances that are negotiated rather than compelled, and the delay shows it. Parliament extended the team's deadline by 30 days only on Tuesday, to August 23, which means today's session came 32 days before the clock now runs out.
The other constraint is corroboration. Much of the case against Yoon's circle rests on the testimony of broker Myung Tae-kyun, and courts have not treated it consistently. Today the Seoul Central District Court accepted enough of it to convict the mayor of Seoul, weeks after another bench relied on it to give the former president two years in the same polling case. Every ruling that credits Myung raises the value of what he says next, and the special counsel has a month to use it.
The conservative People Power Party voted at a caucus meeting Tuesday to end its boycott of parliamentary committees. The seven committee chairs allotted to it will be elected on Thursday, some 50 days after the second half of the current National Assembly began.
Earlier the same day, the chamber passed a bill extending the special counsel's investigation by 30 days, to August 23, by 173 votes with none against. PPP and Reform Party members did not take part. A filibuster begun the previous evening was cut off after 24 hours. The bill also raises the number of seconded civil servants to 150 and adds obstruction of official audits to the list of investigable offences.
Floor leaders separately agreed to pass a bill appointing a special counsel to examine the ballot-paper shortages during the June 3 local elections.
The joint prosecution and police task force examining the ballot-paper shortages of the June 3 local elections questioned the secretariat chief of the Gwangjin district election commission on Wednesday, on suspicion of dereliction of duty and obstruction of electoral freedom. It was the first time the task force has questioned anyone as a suspect rather than a witness.
Investigators have searched the offices of 12 commission officials in Seoul and Songpa district and are examining how the printing floor for ballots was cut from 60 percent of registered voters to 50. Last week they obtained testimony that the election commission's own review team had not been told that ballots ran short during last year's presidential election.
The KOSPI closed Wednesday at 6,797.70, up 49.75 points or 0.74 percent, after opening 4.51 percent higher at 7,052.09 and reaching 7,166.00 during the session. A buy-side sidecar halted program buy orders for five minutes shortly after the open, the second in as many days and the 20th of the year. Counting sell-side triggers, the exchange has activated 40 sidecars in 2026.
An overnight rally in US chip shares set up the open, with Micron up 12.17 percent and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index up 5.21 percent. Foreign investors bought a net 2.62 trillion won (about $1.8 billion); retail and institutional investors together sold about the same amount to take profits. Turnover reached 28.1 trillion won (about $19 billion). The won weakened to 1,480.1 per dollar.
The Seoul Bankruptcy Court reversed its decision to terminate rehabilitation proceedings for the hypermarket chain Homeplus and extended them to September 4. The court had ended the process on July 3 after the company failed to secure the 200 billion won (about $135 million) in operating funds its plan required. Homeplus filed an immediate appeal on July 20. The court then reversed itself, finding that the funding shortfall behind its original decision had since been resolved.
The company says it will reopen 67 core stores, shut since July 13, once the debtor-in-possession loan arrives, converting multi-floor outlets to single floors of roughly 3,300 square metres and stocking food, private label and fast-moving essentials. Online operations restart at 16 stores in the capital region. Thirty-seven non-core stores closed in May will not reopen. A sale process runs to the September deadline.
From the Korea Meteorological Administration, issued 11 a.m. Wednesday. Rain will fall mainly across central regions through Saturday, with frequent lulls. The south and Jeju stay hot.
| Wed 22 | Thu 23 | Fri 24 | Sat 25 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Low | 22–27°C / 72–81°F | 23–26°C / 73–79°F | 22–26°C / 72–79°F | 22–26°C / 72–79°F |
| High | 29–37°C / 84–99°F | 26–37°C / 79–99°F | 28–37°C / 82–99°F | 28–37°C / 82–99°F |
| Sky | Cloudy, scattered rain | Cloudy; rain central and Jeju | Cloudy central, partly cloudy south | Cloudy central, scattered rain |
| Rainfall (mm) | Wed 22 | Thu 23 |
|---|---|---|
| Seoul and Gyeonggi | 20–60 (West Sea islands 5–20) | 30–80 |
| Gangwon | central and southern inland, mountains 20–60 northern inland, mountains 5–40 east coast 5–30 | inland and mountains 30–80 east coast 5–40 |
| Chungcheong | 20–60 | 30–80 |
| Jeolla | North Jeolla 5–40 Gwangju and South Jeolla 5–30 | North Jeolla 5–40 northern South Jeolla 5–20 |
| Gyeongsang | central and northern inland North Gyeongsang 20–60 elsewhere 5–40 | Daegu and North Gyeongsang 10–60 western inland South Gyeongsang 5–40 |
| Jeju | around 5 | around 5 |
Korea produced three numbers this week. Exports of $54.9 billion in twenty days, the highest ever for that stretch of July. Semiconductors at 40.3 percent of the total, up 18.4 points in a year. And a stock index down 28.51 percent from its June peak, the worst performance among the world's major markets.
They belong to one sentence rather than two. When a single product category supplies two of every five export dollars, the headline breaks records while investors bid that category up, and the index falls faster than anyone else's when they sell it. Wednesday's session was that mechanism at speed: a buy-side sidecar six minutes after the open, a gain of more than six percent by mid-morning, a close of 0.74 percent.
So the question for the week is whether a record export figure measures the strength of an industrial base or the amplitude of one product. Car exports fell 10.6 percent over the same twenty days. Those two lines sit on the same customs table, and between them they have already answered part of it.
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