Korea exported $98.89bn of goods in July, the second largest month it has recorded, and semiconductors supplied about seven of every ten dollars added over the year
Sixty two point eight percent.
That is how much more Korea sold abroad in July than in the same month a year earlier, and almost all of the difference came from one product line. The industry ministry put the month at $98.89bn against $60.7bn last July, an increase of about $38.2bn. Semiconductors went from $14.71bn to $41.01bn, which is $26.3bn of that increase on its own, or close to seven dollars in every ten. Everything else together grew 26 percent.
June was still bigger. At $102.2bn it remains the only month Korea has cleared $100bn, and July now sits second on a list whose third place, $87.6bn, was set in May.
The price column explains the export column
The release prints the contract price of memory alongside the shipment values, which is unusual and useful. A 16 gigabit DDR5 chip is recorded at $31.00 in March, then $35.00, $37.50, $40.00, and $45.00 in July. The 128 gigabit NAND part runs $17.70 to $30.10 over the same five months. Those are the numbers underneath a 178.8 percent rise in semiconductor exports, and they are prices rather than volumes.
Two other lines show the same thing without the boom attached. Petroleum product exports rose 34.1 percent by value while the volume shipped fell 8.8 percent. Petrochemical exports rose 10.3 percent by value while volume fell 9.1 percent. In both cases the ministry gives the unit price as the reason, and in both cases a reader looking only at the value would conclude that Korea shipped more of something it shipped less of.
Nineteen of the 20 headline product lines rose. The exception was home appliances, at $600m and down 4 percent.
Where it went, and one line that fell
Computers, at $4.79bn, rose 404 percent, which the ministry attributes to enterprise solid state drives bought for artificial intelligence infrastructure. Ships rose 46.9 percent, a sixth consecutive monthly increase. Cars rose 7 percent.
By destination, eight of the nine major regions grew. Shipments to China reached $21.68bn, up 96.2 percent and a second straight month above $20bn. Shipments to Southeast Asia reached $18.80bn and to the European Union $9.38bn, and both are the largest that Korea has ever recorded to those markets. Sales to the Middle East rose for the first time since January. Only the Commonwealth of Independent States fell, by 9 percent.
Exports to the United States rose 68.7 percent to $17.43bn. Inside that total, cars fell, and the ministry's explanation is that manufacturers have expanded production inside the United States in response to tariffs.
What the ministry said, and the footnote it attached
Kim Jung-kwan, the Minister of Trade, Industry and Resources, described a high result for the first month of a half year and attributed it to competitiveness and diversification across 19 of the 20 main lines. He then set out what he expects to be difficult: new tariff measures under Section 301 of United States trade law, stronger protectionism in major economies, and uncertainty in the Middle East. The government, he said, would mobilise the policy tools available to it so that firms can respond in time to changes in tariff and non tariff conditions.
The release carries a footnote that belongs in any account of it. These are provisional figures, built from Korea Customs Service clearance data through 31 July, and both the totals and the product level figures can be corrected until the annual statistics are confirmed in February 2027.
The trade surplus was $30.32bn, a second consecutive month above $30bn. For the year to July the surplus stands at $168.0bn, which is $134.1bn more than the same seven months of 2025.
