July 13, 2026

Haven’t been here for a few days. Today I heard that the South Korean stock market triggered a circuit breaker. This time, it hit the maximum daily downside of 8%. That means the overall market fell 8%. Its impact is no less than Bitcoin’s daily plunge of 20 percentage points. Of course, the reason it dropped so hard is that the South Korean stock market has been running too wild lately—Samsung, SK hynix, and others became globally popular targets. Even there’s an esports player from League of Legends named Imp, who achieved financial freedom by going heavily into Samsung Electronics. If you算 his earnings from his earlier pro career, this round could have netted him tens of millions of dollars. No wonder he couldn’t even be bothered to keep streaming.
A few days ago, there was a saying that South Korean retail investors were experiencing a “best of times,” because this AI wave’s infrastructure—much of which is being provided by Korean companies—was boosting not just stock prices, but also workers’ wages, which rose along with it. Of course, this AI boom isn’t purely speculation. But if it were just trading stocks, in the end the outcome might not be what most people want. I’ve been through several bull and bear cycles; aside from the crypto market, even China’s A-share market has had its own “baptism” of a bull market. Today’s crash definitely isn’t the curtain call of the Korea story, but it definitely won’t be the last circuit breaker either. When prices are soaring, it can be how crazy; when they fall, it’s how brutal—the unchanging truth of financial markets throughout the ages.