Kwak Noh-Jung

Money Moves

Leading company through record-breaking performance

South Korea's benchmark KOSPI stock index crossed 6,000 points for the first time on February 25, 2026, completing its climb from 5,000 to 6,000 in just 34 trading days—the fastest thousand-point advance in the index's history. The index has gained 43% since January and 76% in 2025, making Seoul's market the best-performing major bourse in the world. Two companies explain most of the move: Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, which together account for roughly 40% of the KOSPI's market capitalization and produce approximately 80% of the world's high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips—the specialized components that artificial intelligence data centers cannot run without.

Updated Feb 25

Built World

Leading company through HBM expansion

For decades, chip packaging was the unglamorous final step—stacking and connecting silicon dies after the real engineering was done. Now it's the constraint holding back AI. SK Hynix announced a $12.9 billion investment to build the world's largest advanced packaging facility in South Korea, a bet that the company controlling 61% of the high-bandwidth memory market can't afford to lose its lead as competitors circle. At CES 2026, the company unveiled the first 16-layer, 48GB HBM4 module—double the capacity of current generation memory—requiring silicon wafers thinned to just 30 micrometers, thinner than a human hair.

Updated Jan 15