South Korea's Kospi halts trading again as Asia sell-off deepens

South Korea’s Kospi was halted for 20 minutes on Friday after falling as much as 8%, a panic-selling trigger that marked the third circuit-breaker activation this week and the fifth this year. The benchmark later closed 5.8% lower as investors raced out of technology shares and chipmakers bore the brunt of the sell-off.

Asia markets slid broadly, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 down more than 4% and SoftBank off 12.5%. Taiwan and mainland China also traded sharply lower, while the MSCI Asia Pacific Infotech gauge fell more than 6%.

On Tuesday, June 23, the index plunged 9.99% to 8,203.84 points, its biggest single-day drop on record, after panic selling centered on Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. A sell-sidecar and a circuit breaker were triggered back to back that session, while foreigners sold about 5.8 trillion won and individual investors bought more than 11 trillion won.

Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix account for more than half of the Kospi benchmark, and both fell more than 10% at one point. Foreign investors were heavy sellers again, dumping about 5 trillion won, or $3.2 billion, of Kospi shares, while retail investors bought 8.2 trillion won and helped trim the market’s losses late in the session.

The sell-off followed a sharp turn lower in U.S. technology shares on Thursday. Apple fell 6% after raising prices for iPads and MacBooks because of higher chip costs, and Microsoft also declined after increasing Xbox console prices to reflect rising component expenses.

The Kospi rose 76% in 2025 and doubled in value in 2026 before the latest slide, making the week’s 7.1% drop its worst since early March, when the Iran war hit global financial markets. Samsung Group is expected to announce a 10-year, 1,000 trillion won investment in South Korea, including a possible 300 trillion won chip-factory plan in the southwest.