The pullback was concentrated, not broad. LG Corporation fell 16.6 percent to 138,300 won ($91.3), LG CNS dropped 11.1 percent to 127,800 won, and Naver gave back 7.7 percent to 250,500 won, a sharp reversal in the precise names that had surged on Monday's physical AI rerating. Samsung Electronics, by contrast, rose 1.4 percent to 354,000 won, the market continuing to distinguish between the confirmed HBM4E shipment milestone that drove its Monday surge and the more speculative physical AI trade unwinding around it. The divergence between the two leaders, Samsung firm on a product catalyst while the LG complex retreated on an unconfirmed partnership, defined the early session.
The new external variable came from Alphabet, which announced after Monday's U.S. session $80 billion in equity offerings to fund AI compute infrastructure, including a $10 billion private placement from Berkshire Hathaway. The scale of the raise, roughly 120 trillion won, reinforces the structural demand underpinning Korean memory makers, since Alphabet's capital expenditure flows toward the high-bandwidth memory and advanced packaging that Samsung Electronics and SK hynix supply. Yet the decision to fund it through share issuance rather than cash flow, which sent Alphabet stock lower in after-hours trading on dilution concerns, signals how capital-intensive the AI buildout has become and introduces a note of caution into a chip rally that has priced in uninterrupted hyperscaler spending.
The unwind in the LG names suggests Monday's group-wide move, built on expectations of a formal Nvidia partnership around chief executive Jensen Huang's Seoul visit, had run ahead of confirmed substance. Doosan Robotics bucked the broader weakness, rising 8.5 percent to 150,200 won, with Robostar up 19.6 percent to 146,200 won, a sign the robotics theme retains a momentum separate from the LG complex even as those names correct.
Foreign investors extended their selling streak into a seventeenth consecutive session, net sellers of 1.38 trillion won in early trade, while institutions bought a net 458 billion won and retail investors added 931.2 billion won, the same domestic-absorption pattern that has underpinned the market through May's foreign exodus. The KOSDAQ fell 2.2 percent to 1,026.90, underperforming the main board for a second session as the junior bourse's growth names bore the brunt of the risk reduction.
Across the region, Japan's Nikkei 225 fell 0.7 percent to 66,475.32 as SoftBank Group gave back part of Monday's surge, while China's Shanghai Composite opened little changed near Monday's 4,055 close, with mainland investors still awaiting direction ahead of the July Politburo meeting.
For Korea, Tuesday's open poses the question that always follows a record: whether the pullback is a healthy consolidation or the start of a deeper rotation. The selective nature of the selling, punishing the unconfirmed physical AI trade while sparing Samsung's confirmed memory catalyst, points to the former. But with foreign capital now selling for a seventeenth straight session, the market's dependence on domestic institutional and retail buying to absorb the outflow remains the structural fragility beneath every record this rally has set.
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