South Korea's benchmark KOSPI index (Korea Composite Stock Price Index) surged as much as 6% on Wednesday morning, driven by a sharp rally in semiconductor shares, with Samsung Electronics climbing over 5% and rival chipmaker SK Hynix jumping more than 9%. The gains followed a strong overnight session on Wall Street, where U.S. memory chip companies including Micron and Sandisk each rose over 10%, riding momentum set by their South Korean counterparts. The Korea Exchange briefly suspended program trading for five minutes after triggering a buy-side sidecar — a circuit-breaker mechanism activated when futures rise steeply — while analysts cautioned that the rally's staying power depends on upcoming earnings and AI investment announcements from major tech firms, including Alphabet, which is set to report its second-quarter results later Wednesday.