South Korea's Kospi plunges more than 8% as chipmakers slide, trading halted

South Korea's Kospi plunged up to 8.2 percent on Friday, triggering a 20-minute circuit-breaker halt for the second time this week, driven by a sharp selloff in chipmakers. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix fell over 9 percent each as foreign investors net sold about 2.6 trillion won worth of Kospi stocks. The slide was fuelled by US tech share weakness on AI hyperscaler spending concerns, despite Samsung Group announcing plans to invest 1,000 trillion won ($645.87 billion) in South Korea over 10 years.