South Korean stocks saw a decline on Tuesday morning as investors opted to sell off market heavyweights, reversing the previous gains on Wall Street. The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) dropped by 2.15 percent to 8,599.75 by late morning. In contrast, U.S. stocks had closed higher, reaching record highs driven by a tech rally.
The U.S. chip giant Nvidia experienced a surge of over 6 percent after its CEO unveiled a new AI processor tailored for local agentic AI applications on personal computers. Meanwhile, oil prices remained steady as Washington faced challenges in advancing efforts for an Iran peace deal, with President Donald Trump noting progress in talks with Iran.
In Seoul, major large-cap shares traded in the negative territory. Samsung Electronics saw a slight increase of 0.93 percent, while SK hynix, its chipmaking rival, declined by 2.59 percent. Hyundai Motor, the top automaker, witnessed a 4.93 percent drop, and Samsung Electro-Mechanics, an electronic components maker, plunged by 11.82 percent. Additionally, Hanwha Aerospace, a defense firm, retreated by 6.41 percent following an order to halt operations at its Daejeon factory due to a recent explosion.
The Korean won was trading at 1,516.25 won against the U.S. dollar, marking a decrease of 11.95 won from the previous session. Moreover, Naver’s cloud subsidiary announced a collaboration with Nvidia Corp. to establish an artificial intelligence (AI) factory, as revealed by Naver Cloud’s CEO Kim Yu-won at the Nvidia Cloud Partners Summit in Taipei. The AI factory concept involves advanced AI infrastructure for training and deploying large-scale AI models in real-world applications and industries.
