South Korea's KOSPI Index nearly doubled within the year, led by a structural shift in storage chip demand driving the rally

Deep Tide TechFlow message: On May 27, the remarkable rally in the South Korean stock market has driven the market’s cumulative gains in 2026 to nearly 100% so far—surpassing the historic surge seen before the bursting of the internet bubble and the late-1980s period of industrialization boom in South Korea.

Fueled by major gains from storage-chip makers such as SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics, the benchmark South Korean equity index, the KOSPI, has been continuously setting new record highs, jumping from 5,000 to 8,300 within just a few months. During Wednesday’s trading session, the index briefly rose by 5.1%. With less than half the year having passed, the index’s current performance is already comparable to the Nasdaq 100’s 102% gain before the 1999 bubble burst.

However, at present, virtually no one in the market is issuing bubble warnings about South Korean stocks, because they believe that the global demand structure for storage chips has changed—moving from the previous cyclical pattern to a longer-term, sustainable growth trend.