A staff member works at a semiconductor company at the Suzhou Industrial Park in Suzhou, East China's Jiangsu Province. Suzhou Industrial Park has focused on the development of emerging industries such as biomedicine and big health, nanotechnology applications and new materials in recent years. File photo: Xinhua

South Korea's information and communications technology (ICT) exports to the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong surged 213.1 percent year-on-year to $27.21 billion in October, helping push the country's overall ICT exports above $70 billion for a second consecutive month, the Yonhap News Agency reported on Sunday.

South Korea's total ICT exports reached $70.35 billion in October, more than tripling from a year earlier, driven largely by semiconductors. Chip exports jumped 259.4 percent to $56.47 billion, while shipments of computers and accessories rose more than fivefold amid strong demand for high-capacity solid-state drives used in servers, according to Yonhap.

The sharp rise in shipments comes as China's artificial intelligence (AI) and electronics industries continue to expand rapidly, generating strong demand across the semiconductor and computing supply chains.

In the first nine months of 2026, value added in China's electronic information manufacturing sector above designated size rose 15.8 percent year-on-year, while integrated circuit output increased 23.3 percent to 442.8 billion units, according to China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

AI-related demand has also accelerated. China had more than 700 million generative AI users as of the end of June - more than half of its population - according to the China Internet Network Information Center. The country's intelligent computing capacity reached 2,185 exa floating-point operations per second as of the end of June, up 177 percent year-on-year.

That expansion is translating into growing demand for memory chips, servers, storage products and other components needed to train and run large-language AI models and to build data centers.

China's own semiconductor industry is also growing rapidly. In the first 10 months of 2026, exports of integrated circuits and memory components surged 101.9 percent and 132.5 percent year-on-year, respectively, according to customs data cited by the Xinhua News Agency.

The simultaneous rise in China's domestic chip output and its imports of advanced semiconductor products reflects the scale and complexity of the country's electronics supply chain, where domestic production, imported components and global suppliers remain closely interconnected.The strong October figures thus underscore both South Korea's semiconductor export momentum and the continued importance of Chinese mainland and Hong Kong demand to the regional technology supply chain. With AI investment expanding and computing infrastructure growing, demand for high-performance memory, storage and other advanced components is likely to remain a key driver of Asia's semiconductor trade, experts said.

Global Times