Semiconductors, batteries, shipbuilding, defence exports, robotics, and Korea's AI build-out.
Three Korean defence contractors reported the second quarter of 2026 within a fortnight of each other. Two of them grew revenue and shrank profit. The order books have never been fuller, and that is not the same thing.
China books four times Korea's tonnage. Korea books the ships that pay. The second-quarter filings show what that trade is worth — and the backlog shows what it costs.
SK hynix still leads high-bandwidth memory, Micron has overtaken Samsung on some measures, and the HBM4 qualification race for NVIDIA's Rubin platform resets the board. What the share numbers mean and what they don't.
