Korea's exports grew 68.7% in August. Strip out three product lines and they grew 2%.

Korea exported $98.25bn of goods in August, 68.7% more than a year earlier. Three product lines — memory chips, computers and refined petroleum — supplied 98% of that increase. Take those three out and the rest of Korea’s export economy grew by about 2%.

The headline is real money. August was the third-largest export month Korea has recorded, behind $102.0bn in June and $99.0bn in July, and the trade surplus came to $34.75bn, a third straight month above $30bn. Through eight months the cumulative surplus is $202.5bn. The comparable figure a year ago was $40.3bn.

Semiconductors alone were $46.65bn, up 209.0%. That is the largest month in the history of the series and 47.5% of everything the country shipped.

The arithmetic of a 69% month

The Trade Ministry’s release notes that exports excluding semiconductors still rose 20%. That is correct, and it is the more encouraging way to put it.

It also leaves computers inside the “excluding semiconductors” bucket. Computers were $6.24bn, up 419.5%, and the ministry’s own text explains why: NAND flash prices, in enterprise SSDs. That is memory sold in a metal case rather than on a module.

The 2025 column is derived: the ministry publishes current levels and growth rates, not prior-year levels. Those three lines added $39.3bn of the $40.0bn total increase.

Nothing in the number is capacity

The DDR5 16Gb fixed contract price ran $35.00 in April, $37.50 in May, $40.00 in June, $45.00 in July and $46.50 in August. 128Gb NAND went from $24.20 to $30.50 over the same five months. No fab was built in that window.

Refined petroleum tells the same story from the other end, where the volumes are published. Export value rose 65.3%; shipped volume fell 2.2%. The unit price was $1,143 a tonne, up 69.1%, on Dubai crude at $88.80 a barrel, up 27.9% after disruption around the Strait of Hormuz. Petrochemicals: value up 12.2%, volume down 7.0%.

What is actually shrinking

Cars fell 29.8% to $3.85bn. The ministry attributes that to summer shutdowns shifting from late July 2025 into early August 2026, plus a partial strike — a timing artefact that should unwind in September. Ships fell 45.9% to $1.69bn on delivery scheduling, which says nothing about the order book and rather more about the gap between winning orders and booking revenue.

Displays fell 5%. Household goods fell 3%, home appliances 2%, textiles were flat. General machinery managed 1.8% and steel 7.9%, the latter on American data-centre construction rather than anything sold into Europe, where the new tariff-rate quota is biting.

The genuinely healthy small lines are small. Batteries were $0.60bn, up 24.0% and positive for a fourth month. Cosmetics were $1.31bn, up 52.1%. Bio-health was $1.41bn, up 22.3%. Together those three are less than a tenth of the semiconductor line.

The China number needs reading twice

Exports to China rose 119.3% to $24.10bn. In the first 25 days of August, chips to China were $13.4bn, up 320% — while petrochemicals to China fell 5%, wireless handsets 4% and displays 14%. The bilateral relationship did not improve. One product got expensive.

The United States took $16.50bn, up 89.3%, with computer exports over the first 25 days up 1,040% and cars down 43%. On the import side Korea bought $2.57bn of semiconductor manufacturing equipment, up 117.3%, which is the one line in the release that points at future capacity rather than current pricing.

What a surplus this size does next

The Bank of Korea put July’s current account surplus at $42.08bn, with a goods balance of $40.43bn — the 39th consecutive monthly surplus and the second largest ever recorded. August’s trade figures imply another very large print when that release lands in early October.

A surplus of that scale normally lifts a currency. It has not, and the reasons are structural rather than cyclical — the subject of why the won stays weak while exports boom. It does, though, remove one argument against tightening, and the Bank of Korea’s own dot plot already sits above the current 3.00% base rate.

Figures current as of 7 September 2026. Export, import and product-line data are provisional customs clearance figures from the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources release of 1 September 2026, revisable until annual statistics are finalised in February 2027. Balance of payments figures are Bank of Korea provisional data published 4 September 2026. Prior-year product levels are derived from published growth rates.