South Korea’s ICT exports climbed 140.6% from a year earlier to $53.36 billion in July, the highest level ever recorded for the month, as expanding global investment in artificial intelligence boosted demand for chips and related hardware. The sector has now topped $50 billion for a second straight month and has made up more than half of the country’s total exports for three consecutive months, reaching 54.0% of July’s $98.89 billion overall export tally. Semiconductors led the gains at $41.02 billion, up 178.8% year on year, with growth above 100% for seven straight months as server memory used for AI inference (running trained AI models) saw stronger shipments. Computers and peripherals reached $4.94 billion, supported by solid-state drive, or SSD, exports for AI servers, with SSDs alone accounting for $4.51 billion. ICT imports rose 37.3% to $18.3 billion, leaving the sector with a $35.06 billion trade surplus that has remained above $30 billion for three consecutive months.