Seoul stocks trade sharply lower Friday morning on profit-taking

Korean stocks traded sharply lower late Friday morning as investors offloaded major chip shares to take profits following overnight losses in U.S. artificial intelligence (AI) and semiconductor stocks.

After opening 2.36 percent lower, the benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) shed 135.29 points, or 2.44 percent, to 5,398.48 as of 11:20 a.m.

Overnight, U.S. stocks closed mixed, with losses in major technology shares weighing on the broader market.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.02 percent, while the S&P 500 fell 1.21 percent and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite shed 2.6 percent.

Micron Technology plunged 6.26 percent, while Nvidia and Intel tumbled 4.4 percent and 8.04 percent, respectively.

In Seoul, large-cap shares traded lower.

Semiconductor heavyweights Samsung Electronics and SK hynix shed 3.03 percent and 0.25 percent, respectively. SK hynix pared its earlier losses following news that it had decided to suspend plans to list its U.S. subsidiary, Solidigm.

AI investment firm SK Square edged down 0.4 percent following the news.

Solidigm sits within a multilayered corporate structure, with SK Square as the parent of SK hynix, which owns Solidigm. The structure has raised concerns that a separate listing could exacerbate the so-called holding company discount, in which a parent company’s stock trades below the value of its underlying assets.

The Korean won was trading at 1,324 won against the U.S. dollar as of 11:20 a.m., up 2.5 won from the previous stock trading session.