Recently, South Korea’s two leading memory chip makers, SK hynix and Samsung Electronics, suffered a notable setback in overseas markets. On July 13, 2026, SK hynix plunged 15.37% in a single day, with total pullback of nearly 40% from its June high; on the same day, Samsung Electronics fell 10.7%, with total pullback exceeding 30%, and triggered a trading halt in the Korean KOSPI index, putting pressure on the global semiconductor sector.

The core drivers of this sell-off were an expectation gap and a convergence of fund flows. Earnings outlooks showed that SK hynix’s operating profit in Q2 was 60.4 trillion won; although it surged year over year, it came in below the market’s expected 65 trillion won. Because HBM is locked in long-term contracts, its average price increase lagged the spot market, making profit leverage weaker than its peers and triggering profit-taking after “good news was already priced in.”

Macro and competitive conditions were also unfavorable. Expectations of further rate hikes by the Bank of Korea tightened financial conditions and weighed on high-valuation growth stocks. At the same time, foreign capital systematically rebalanced and exited the AI “consensus trade” corridor. Meanwhile, Chinese makers are accelerating their rise: Yangtze Memory (NAND market share of 13%) and CXMT (DRAM market share of 7.7%). They continue to divert orders in mature process nodes and mid-to-low-end segments thanks to cost advantages and supply-chain security, forcing Korean companies to shift toward higher-end HBM, while overall market share faces long-term erosion.

Although the AI super-cycle logic hasn’t broken, the market has started pricing in anxiety about capacity oversupply and the cycle topping after 2028. In the short term, this looks like a technical correction driven by earnings pressure and leverage unwinding; in the long term, it is a snapshot of the global memory landscape rebuilding from “US-Korea dominance” toward “multipolar competition.”