South Korea’s tech exports surged to a monthly record of $25.45 billion in November, driven by a 38.6% rise in semiconductor shipments and renewed demand from China. Data released Monday by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources shows exports to China rose 25.3% year-on-year to $9.91 billion, outpacing the 7.9% growth ($3.28 billion) in shipments to the U.S.

The gains were heavily concentrated in the memory sector, with high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and DDR5 DRAM pushing semiconductor exports to an all-time high of $17.3 billion. However, this masked a 4.7% contraction in system semiconductor exports — logic chips and non-memory