South Korea Stock Market Value Surpasses India, Rises to Sixth Globally, Chip Giants Lead Strongly

TradingKey - During the Asian trading session on June 2, led by the sustained dominance of chip giants SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics, the total market capitalization of South Korean listed companies surpassed the $5 trillion mark, officially overtaking India's $4.8 trillion to become the world's sixth-largest stock market for the first time since 2003.

[KOSPI Index year-to-date gain exceeds 100%, Source: Google Finance]

Since the start of the year, the cumulative gain of South Korea's KOSPI index has exceeded 100%, and the South Korean stock market has successively overtaken Canada, Germany, the UK, and France.

The core engine driving this surge is the two South Korean semiconductor giants deeply embedded in the global AI supply chain: SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics.

On May 27, SK Hynix's share price surged over 11% intraday, with its market capitalization historically breaking the $1 trillion mark, becoming the third Asian chipmaker to reach this milestone after Samsung Electronics and TSMC.

Over the past year, the stock has soared more than 1,000% cumulatively. As the largest supplier of High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) chips for Nvidia, SK Hynix holds approximately a 57% revenue share in the global HBM market. The company's first-quarter net profit surged 398% year-on-year, with its operating margin hitting a record high of 72%.

On June 1, Samsung Electronics' market capitalization further exceeded 2,000 trillion won (approximately $1.32 trillion), becoming the first stock in the South Korean market to break the 2,000 trillion won mark. Samsung Electronics' first-quarter operating profit surged more than eightfold to 57.2 trillion won, already exceeding full-year earnings estimates for 2025.

Analysts pointed out that the valuation re-rating of the South Korean stock market is highly dependent on the memory chip boom cycle, with Samsung and SK Hynix contributing the vast majority of the gains.

At the same time, the Indian stock market is under pressure due to factors such as a weakening rupee, record foreign capital outflows, and a lack of companies directly related to AI infrastructure.

It should be noted that while South Korea has surpassed India in terms of market capitalization, IMF data shows that India's $4.15 trillion economy remains far larger than South Korea's $1.93 trillion.