South Korea, once again, stands on a height from which you could jump down

In the winter of 1998, Korea had a kind of death that only middle-class fathers faced: jumping off the rooftop of an apartment building they had paid for over ten years. It wasn’t because of despair—it was because they had worked out the numbers: once a person dies, the life insurance payout is enough to repay the mortgage, and the wife and children can stay in that home. That year, the suicide rate among middle-aged men in Korea jumped by more than 40%.

Twenty-eight years later, in 2026—after an entire generation—Seoul home prices have continued rising for 74 straight weeks. The KOSPI surged to its highest point of the year, reaching 9,385. A Samsung Electronics engineer could borrow 500 million won from the company at a 1.5% interest rate to buy a home in Dongtan, completely unconstrained by national lending limits.

Meanwhile, South Korea’s foreign exchange reserves total $427.3 billion, and the current account surplus sets a record. It looks like 1998 will never happen again.

But if you lay this country’s balance sheet out—household debt nearing 2000 trillion won, and the amount of funds raised through stock market financing surging to the highest level since statistics began in 1999—you realize something uncomfortable: Korean households are standing once again at a height. Only this time, what they’re standing on isn’t foreign debt, but AI chips.