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<\/a><\/p>\nPublished On 27 Oct 202627 Oct 2026<\/p>\n
South Korea\u2019s economy grew much faster than expected in the July-September quarter amid booming demand for chips used in artificial intelligence (AI).<\/p>\n
Gross domestic product (GDP) expanded 1 percent on a quarterly basis, or 3.4 percent year-on-year, advance estimates released by the Bank of Korea showed on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
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The Bank of Korea forecast in August that GDP would grow 0.3 percent in the third quarter.<\/p>\n
Exports, which account for about 45 percent of South Korea\u2019s GDP, rose 2.3 percent quarter-on-quarter, driven by semiconductors, machinery and electrical equipment, according to the central bank.<\/p>\n
Investment in facilities and intellectual property rose 4.1 percent and 2.3 percent, respectively, while investment in construction edged up 0.7 percent.<\/p>\n
Despite the robust growth in exports and investment, private consumption fell 0.2 percent.<\/p>\n
The latest results put the South Korean economy well on track to achieve its biggest economic expansion in more than a decade.<\/p>\n
South Korean Finance Minister Lee Hyoung-il said earlier this month that he expected growth to reach 3.4-3.6 percent in 2026, which would be the strongest performance since 2011, excluding the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
South Korea\u2019s economy grew 1 percent in 2025, its slowest expansion since the pandemic.<\/p>\n
Asia\u2019s fourth-largest economy has capitalised on the AI boom amid a global shortage of memory chips.<\/p>\n
South Korea is home to two of the three largest memory chip makers, SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics, which together control roughly 80 percent of the global market for high-bandwidth memory and 60 percent of the market for dynamic random-access memory.<\/p>\n
South Korea\u2019s exports in September surged 83.5 percent year-on-year to $120.9bn, with chips accounting for nearly half of all shipments, according to the Korea Customs Service.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Asia\u2019s fourth-largest economy grows\u00a03.4 percent year-on-year amid strong semiconductor demand. Published On 27 Oct 202627 Oct 2026 South…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":942577,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[77,64,63,99,6073,164,10523,44,5813,105],"class_list":["post-942576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-asia-pacific","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-business-and-economy","tag-economy","tag-international-trade","tag-news","tag-south-korea","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=942576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/942577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=942576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=942576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=942576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}