South Korea's exports nearly doubled in October from a year earlier, and the government credits the worldwide rush to build AI. The country sold $115.28 billion of goods abroad, up 93.7%, according to early figures its trade ministry released on Nov. 1. Chips alone brought in $56.44 billion, about 3.6 times as much as in October 2025. The ministry says that is because the world's big tech companies keep pouring money into equipment and facilities in a race to lead in AI, which keeps both chip prices and the number of chips sold high.
The pull reaches past chips. Computer exports rose almost sixfold to $5.85 billion, which the ministry puts down to more spending on servers as AI services spread and to demand for the storage drives that go in them. Exports of electrical equipment reached $1.99 billion, the most for any month on record, which the ministry credits to demand for the transformers, wires and cables that AI data centers need. Sales to the United States rose 185.8% to $24.90 billion, on strong demand for chips, computers and electrical equipment, along with cars and steel, and sales to China rose 133.6% to $26.98 billion.
Part of the jump comes from the calendar. The Chuseok holiday fell in October last year and in September this year, so this October had more working days. Counted per working day, exports rose 76%, to $5.24 billion a day. October also came in below September, when exports reached a record $121.1 billion and chip sales a record $60.3 billion. Even so, a news report says October's rise from a year earlier was the largest since January 1974.
From January through October, exports totaled $930 billion, the first time the first ten months of a year have topped $900 billion. Trade minister Kim Jung-kwan says it is now all but certain the country will pass $1 trillion in exports for the year during November, and he credits growing demand for chips and other advanced products as the AI industry grows, along with Korean companies' ability to compete. A news report says that would make South Korea the fourth country to export more than $1 trillion in a year, after the United States, China and Germany.
The figures are early ones, counted from customs records through Oct. 31, and can be corrected until the year's final statistics come out in February 2027. The minister also said many small and mid-sized companies are still struggling with uncertain global trade. It is not yet clear how long tech companies will keep spending on AI at this pace.