Daily Woody Weekly Review | Jul 11, 2026 — SK Hynix's Times Square Debut, a First Final Verdict
On Friday morning New York time, SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won and SK Hynix CEO Kwak Noh-Jung rang the opening bell at the Nasdaq MarketSite in Times Square, where lead underwriter JP Morgan lit a giant Korean flag on a Manhattan rooftop display. The American depositary receipts opened at $170, about 14% above the $149 offering price, and traded as high as roughly $176 during the session.
The $26.5 billion raise is the largest U.S. share sale ever completed by a foreign company, edging past Alibaba's $25 billion in 2014. Only last month's SpaceX offering, a record $75 billion, raised more in U.S. equity markets. Demand ran more than seven times supply, and the deal was priced at a premium of about 3% over the Seoul close rather than the usual discount. Three cornerstone investors — Baillie Gifford, Coatue and Situational Awareness — took about $5 billion of the ADRs. Ten ADRs equal one common share; regular trading under the ticker SKHY begins Monday. Proceeds will fund EUV lithography equipment and new fabrication plants in Yongin and Cheongju, and Chairman Chey said the company would accelerate those investments.
The week turned when Iran attacked three merchant vessels, including a Qatari-flagged LNG carrier, in the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. Central Command struck more than 80 Iranian targets the first day and about 90 the second, saying the aim was to degrade Tehran's ability to threaten navigation, and Washington revoked the oil-sale waiver that had anchored the interim deal. Iran's Revolutionary Guard said it fired missiles and drones at U.S. bases in Bahrain and Kuwait, triggering alerts across three Gulf states.
At the NATO summit in Ankara, President Trump said the ceasefire looked to be over and called further talks a waste of time. Iran's chief negotiator, parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, wrote on X that the strait would stay open only through Iranian arrangements. The mid-June memorandum of understanding, months in the making, was effectively in ruins — though by week's end, reports that Tehran had sounded out Washington on a new deal, alongside third-party mediation efforts, revived hopes of a return to talks, and U.S. markets rebounded.
Samsung Electronics reported a record quarterly operating profit of 89.4 trillion won (about $58 billion) on Tuesday, yet its shares slid more than 5%. On Wednesday the KOSPI closed down 5.35% at 7,246.79 and the junior KOSDAQ gave up the 800 line for the first time in ten months, as a debate over whether the memory cycle had peaked met fresh Gulf escalation. The index then rose two days running to 7,475.94, briefly clearing 7,700 on Friday and triggering a buy-side circuit breaker before fading. The won hovered near 1,500 to the dollar all week.
Later in the week, the IMF and the Asian Development Bank both raised Korea's 2026 growth forecast to 2.6%, citing semiconductor exports. Real-economy readings pointed up while share prices changed direction by the day.
On Thursday South Korea's Supreme Court upheld a seven-year prison sentence for former president Yoon Suk Yeol, the first of his eight criminal trials to reach the top court. The case concerned obstruction of cabinet deliberations, a falsified martial-law proclamation, and the deployment of presidential security agents to resist his own arrest after the December 2024 decree was overturned. The court found no error in the lower ruling; Yoon, already detained, did not attend, and his lawyers vowed a constitutional challenge.
The ruling's reach was immediate. On Friday night a Seoul court jailed Kim Tae-hyo, former first deputy national security adviser, over allegations he directed officials to send messages justifying the martial law to allies including the United States, the EU and Canada. A special-counsel prosecutor cited Thursday's Supreme Court finding — that the government's martial-law statements were themselves unlawful — as grounds for the warrant.
President Lee Jae Myung attended his first NATO summit (July 7–8, Ankara), proposing a "Korea-NATO Defense Industry Partnership 2.0" that moves beyond arms sales toward joint development and production. Seoul agreed to open negotiations on a procurement framework that would let Korean firms bid into NATO's common-procurement market, estimated at about 15 trillion won a year, and Lee pursued follow-up talks with Trump on U.S. warship construction. In a first meeting with Ukraine's President Zelensky, the two agreed to handle the question of North Korean prisoners of war under international and humanitarian law.
Lee then made the first South Korean state visit to Mongolia in 15 years, issuing a "golden age" joint declaration and discussing cooperation on copper, molybdenum and rare earths — critical minerals for which Korea imports roughly 95% of its needs. Today he becomes the first Korean leader to attend Mongolia's Naadam festival as guest of honor.
On Friday China's Commerce Ministry and customs administration halted helium exports with immediate effect, giving no reason and no end date. The oddity is that China is not a helium exporter but a country that imports more than 80% of what it uses — per a Chinese brokerage report, roughly 46% from Qatar and 35% from Russia. With Qatari supply disrupted by the Gulf war, one reading is that Beijing moved to lock down what remained. Helium cools the low-temperature processes in chip and display fabrication. The United States is the world's largest helium producer at about 43% of output, with Qatar at 33% — leaving another supply card on the far side of Beijing's ban. The direct hit to Korea is limited: customs data show Korea imported 1,375 tons of Qatari helium last year against just 35.7 tons from China.
Hot weather holds through the weekend and into early next week, with tropical nights in places. Rain reaches Jeju from Saturday afternoon and the southern coast on Sunday, with scattered afternoon showers inland.
| Sat 11 | Sun 12 | Mon 13 | Tue 14 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sky | Cloudy Jeju rain | Cloudy S. coast rain | Partly cloudy | Clouding over p.m. |
| Low (°C) | 21–26 | 22–27 | 23–27 | 23–27 |
| High (°C) | 29–36 | 30–37 | 29–37 | 29–36 |
Advisory — Heat and tropical nights persist; high swells are possible along the Jeju and southern coasts.
On Friday night a Korean flag glowed over Times Square. As the largest U.S. listing ever by a foreign company opened, missiles were crossing the Gulf. A glittering debut and a barrage — two scenes that look unrelated, yet most of what moved markets this week traces back to one place: the Strait of Hormuz. Fear of a wider war knocked the KOSPI down more than 5% on Wednesday before word of mediation revived it, and the rate decision the Bank of Korea weighs on Thursday sits in the same aftershock. Friday’s helium halt shares the root: China, which had leaned on Qatar for nearly half its supply, locked down what remained when that sea lane came under fire. The memory the Nasdaq cheered is cooled, in the end, by gas that ships through the Gulf. Capital crossed a border this week. The supply chain that capital will build has not yet cleared the strait.
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