SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea's benchmark KOSPI index plunged again Wednesday, falling 409.52 points, or 5.35 percent, to 7,246.79, extending a punishing two-day rout that has now wiped out a significant portion of the index's extraordinary gains from earlier this year, as investors continued dumping shares in chipmakers Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix.

Wednesday's decline followed an even more dramatic session Tuesday, when the KOSPI plunged more than 8 percent intraday and triggered South Korea's sixth circuit breaker of the year, halting trading for 20 minutes after the index fell below key psychological levels in rapid succession. Tuesday's session ultimately closed down 4.91 percent, but the selling resumed almost immediately Wednesday, with the index opening sharply lower and continuing to slide through the afternoon session, according to Korean market data.

The renewed selloff has come despite, and in some ways because of, historically strong earnings results from Samsung Electronics, the country's largest company and a dominant force within the KOSPI index. Samsung reported preliminary second-quarter operating profit of 89.4 trillion won, or approximately $58.6 billion, a nearly 19-fold increase from the same period last year and a figure that exceeded consensus analyst estimates. Rather than lifting the broader market, the announcement triggered what traders described as a classic "sell the news" reaction, with investors concluding that expectations for the AI-driven memory chip boom had already been fully priced into share values well before the results were formally announced.

Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, which together account for roughly 53 percent of the KOSPI's total market capitalization, bore the........

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