The year-on-year rise in chip exports, US$19.771 billion, accounted for 70 per cent of the US$28.068 billion increase in total exports, South Korean business daily Seoul Economic Daily reported on 2 April 2026. The paper said recent chip exports showed increases in both unit prices and volumes across major product categories. In its 1 April 2026 report, Seoul Economic Daily said the price of 128GB NAND flash, a data-storage chip, climbed from US$2.51 in March 2025 to US$17.73 in March 2026, and that the price of 8GB DDR4, an older generation of working-memory chip, rose 863 per cent over the same period. On VCA’s calculation from the MOTIR figures, semiconductors made up about 38 per cent of all March exports.

Information and communication technology (ICT) products, a category that includes chips, made up 50.5 per cent of March exports, the Ministry of Science and ICT said in figures reported by Yonhap news agency in the Korea Herald on 14 April 2026. Yonhap linked the chip surge to demand from artificial intelligence (AI) data centres worldwide.

Min Joo Kang, senior economist for South Korea and Japan at Dutch bank ING, linked that dependence to raw-material supply risk in a note on 1 April 2026. “If supply disruptions persist, adverse effects could become evident in the second half of 2026,” she wrote. “Given Korea’s high dependence on chips for growth, negative impacts could intensify later this year.” VCA’s assessment is that an export total resting this heavily on chips now moves with three inputs Seoul does not control: Gulf energy, Chinese minerals and US export licensing.

MOTIR’s 1 April release put March energy imports at US$9.4 billion, down 7.0 per cent, and said crude oil imports fell “as supply disruptions from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz reduced import volumes”. Liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports fell 19 per cent in March “as physical shipments became difficult to secure”, Seoul Economic Daily reported on 2 April. Korea’s reliance on Gulf LNG predates the conflict in the Middle East. The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported in June 2025 that China, India and South Korea took 52 per cent of all LNG moving through the strait in 2024, and that this LNG came primarily from Qatar.

Iran said on 18 April 2026 that it had closed the strait again, in response to the continued US blockade of its ports, Al Jazeera reported, hours after the waterway had reopened.

China supplied 47.5 per cent of South Korea’s rare earth imports in 2024, according to Korea International Trade Association data cited by South Korean English-language daily the Korea Times on 14 April 2025. The Korea Economic Institute of America, a US institute registered as an agent of a public corporation set up by the South Korean government, put South Korea’s reliance on Chinese tungsten imports at 95 per cent in October 2024 and listed semiconductors among tungsten’s main uses.

China has already tightened licensing on rare earths. On 4 April 2025, China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) announced export controls on seven types of rare earth elements, requiring exporters to apply for licences, according to China Briefing, a publication supported by professional services firm Dezan Shira & Associates. MOFCOM suspended a further set of rare earth controls, announced on 9 October 2025, for one year after the US-China meeting in Busan, China Briefing reported on 10 November 2025, but China had yet to suspend the April 2025 controls at that date.

The validated end user status that let Samsung Electronics and SK hynix bring American chipmaking tools into their factories in China without US export licences was due to end on 31 December 2025, Reuters reported on 30 December 2025. The US government instead granted both firms an annual licence covering 2026, Reuters reported, citing two people familiar with the matter, and called the approval “a temporary relief for the South Korean firms”. Reuters also reported that both companies count China as “one of their key production bases” for traditional memory chips, whose prices it said were surging on demand from AI data centres and tight supply.

Exports to China rose 64.0 per cent to US$16.5 billion in March, edging past exports to the United States, which rose 47.1 per cent to US$16.3 billion, according to MOTIR. VCA’s assessment is that any tightening of US rules on Korean chip plants in China, or on sales to Chinese buyers, would land on the product line that supplied 70 per cent of March’s growth.

VCA will track three indicators after 24 April 2026. MOTIR’s April and May releases will show whether chip exports keep carrying the total. Korean LNG import volumes will show how long the energy shortfall lasts. Whether, and on what terms, Washington renews the Samsung and SK hynix licences for 2027 will show whether annual approval has become routine.

In VCA’s view, a tanker held in the Gulf, a Chinese export licence refused or a US licence not renewed for 2027 would each strike the chip exports behind the March record.

Correction, 27 September 2026: This article was revised to correct the Korean trade ministry’s name in the body (Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources, MOTIR, not MOTIE); to date the headline’s record figure and state it as US$86.1 billion; to credit the 70 per cent share of export growth to Seoul Economic Daily rather than to MOTIR and Digitimes; to remove statements attributed to the Korea Herald (that Korean chipmakers supply Nvidia, AMD and Chinese AI chip designers) and to ING (on AI data-centre power demand) that those sources do not make; to remove unsourced statements on Qatari LNG contracts and Korea Gas Corporation inventories, Chinese silicon inputs, supplier qualification in Australia, Canada and Vietnam, high-bandwidth memory sales to Chinese cloud operators, and a “narrower base than any time in the past decade”; to replace them with sourced figures on LNG, rare earth, tungsten and US licensing exposure; to link the MOTIR March 2026 release directly; and to remove links from the summary points. On 23 and 24 September 2026, before this revision, the ministry’s name was updated from the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE) to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources (MOTIR) in summary point 1 and in three places in the body, without a correction notice; this line records that change.