South Korea’s Exports Top $700 Billion as AI Chips Offset Weaker U.S. Sales

South Korea’s exports passed $700 billion for the first time in 2025, driven by a surge in demand for the memory chips that power artificial intelligence data centers, the country’s industry ministry said Thursday. The figures, reported by AFP, show how much of the global AI buildout, much of it led by U.S. companies, runs through Korean factories.

Total exports rose 3.8 percent from 2024 to about $709.7 billion, according to a report by the Indian news agency ANI that drew on the ministry’s data and on Maeil Business News Korea. The trade surplus reached about $78 billion, ANI reported. Semiconductor exports hit a record $173.4 billion, up more than 20 percent from a year earlier. In December alone, chip exports rose more than 40 percent from a year earlier, the tenth straight monthly gain and the highest monthly figure on record, AFP reported. Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, the country’s two big memory makers, are the main players, AFP noted.

The strength was not limited to chips. Auto shipments set a record of about $72 billion despite pressure from American tariffs, and agriculture and cosmetics also reached record highs, helped by interest in Korean food, beauty products and pop culture, according to AFP.

The United States was a weak spot. Exports rose to every market except the U.S. and China, AFP reported, with shipments to both held back by tariffs, including U.S. duties on steel, automobiles and machinery. ANI reported that exports to the United States fell 3.8 percent to about $122.9 billion. Washington had first imposed a 25 percent across-the-board tariff on South Korea, which a last-minute agreement later reduced to 15 percent, AFP said. The United States remains one of South Korea’s largest trade partners.

Industry Minister Kim Jung-kwan called the record a result achieved “amid challenging domestic and external conditions” and said it showed the economy’s “solid resilience and growth potential,” AFP reported. He was cautious about the year ahead, saying export conditions in 2026 are expected to remain difficult because of trade uncertainty and questions about how long the semiconductor boom will last.

That caution matters for American businesses and consumers as well. The record leaves the trade relationship with Washington two-sided: Korea’s chips feed the AI buildout in the United States, while U.S. tariffs on Korean steel, cars and machinery are the main reason sales to American buyers fell in 2025, as the ministry’s figures show.

President Lee Jae Myung has pledged to triple government spending on AI this year, with the aim of making South Korea one of the world’s top three AI powers, behind the United States and China, AFP reported. Whether global demand for AI hardware keeps growing at its recent pace is the main question hanging over Korea’s export outlook, and the ministry’s own warning on the matter suggests officials do not take it for granted.