The KOSPI officially entered a bear market on Wednesday, with various sources estimating the daily decline between 5.35% and 5.4%. The index closed at 7,246.79 points, a drop of over twenty percent from its all-time high of 9,114.55 points seen on June 22nd, exceeding the threshold commonly used to define a bear market.

Intraday movement was indeed volatile, with the index rising 1.8% in the morning before falling by over six percent as the day progressed, triggering a circuit breaker mechanism that temporarily halted algorithmic trading. This was the sixth circuit breaker trigger for the KOSPI this year, with almost half of the twelve events in the index's entire history occurring within the year 2026.

Chip manufacturers were at the center of the decline, with Samsung Electronics falling between 6.3% and 7%, while SK Hynix experienced losses of between 4% and 6.1% according to different sources; these small differences between sources are likely due to price fluctuations at the time of measurement. These two stocks together account for more than half of the index's market capitalization, according to some estimates close to sixty percent, explaining why the index moved so sharply.

The most interesting detail is that this decline came immediately after Samsung announced record profit figures on Tuesday. The company reported an incredible nineteenfold increase in second-quarter operating profit, far exceeding expectations, but its revenue guidance fell short of estimates. This underscores growing skepticism in the market; expectations for AI infrastructure spending have risen so high that even record profit figures are no longer fully meeting them, and the sustainability of growth is now being questioned instead of the quality of earnings.

Despite this decline, KOSPI remains the year's best-performing major index, having peaked at 116%, and while that gain has now narrowed to around 72%, it remains a remarkable level globally. This summarizes the story of the Korean market: the concentration of these two stocks is the main source of both this extraordinary rise and the current sharp decline.

For those following the Korean semiconductor sector and related assets through Gate, the key question is how this volatility will unfold ahead of SK Hynix's planned US stock listing of approximately $28 billion. Such a sharp correction could directly impact both the timing of the listing and investor appetite. Furthermore, how this concentrated structure will be interpreted in conjunction with general valuation concerns in the global semiconductor sector will remain a critical question in the coming weeks.