South Korea's benchmark KOSPI index suffered one of the steepest single-day declines in its history Tuesday, plunging 10.84% to close at 6,023.66, as a massive selloff in semiconductor stocks triggered emergency trading halts and rattled investor confidence across the country's technology sector.

The index fell 732.09 points from the previous session, briefly dipping as low as 5,992.91 before markets closed, marking the second-largest point drop and fourth-largest percentage decline in KOSPI's history.

Chip Stocks at the Center of the Rout

The plunge was driven overwhelmingly by heavy selling in South Korea's two dominant semiconductor giants, both of which carry outsized weight in the benchmark index. Heavy losses in semiconductor giants Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, coupled with concerns over China's growing chip industry and weakening confidence in global AI spending, sparked panic selling across the Korea Exchange.

The severity of the decline caught even seasoned market observers off guard, given how central both companies are to the broader index's composition. Heavy selling in Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, which together account for a large share of the KOSPI, accelerated the market-wide decline throughout the session.

Trading Halted Multiple Times

The scale of the selling was severe enough to trigger multiple layers of South Korea's automated market-stabilization mechanisms over the course of the day. A program sell sidecar was triggered in the KOSPI market at around 9:06 a.m.........

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