East Asia Econ

Korea – next macro beneficiary of the chip supercycle?

I don't know nearly enough about tech to decide whether this is a memory supercycle. But it certainly looks like it might be, which raises the possibility that macro in Korea in 2026 could have shades of Taiwan macro in 2025.

Paul Cavey

Nov 18, 2025 • 6 min read

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East Asia Today

The major releases today were Q3 GDP in Japan (weaker headline, but details ok) and fx settlement data in China (pointing to another month of capital inflows). Elsewhere, the big trend in Taiwan's FDI data remains the shift away from investing in China.

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Last week, next week

A recap of themes for the region: China's messy cycle; nominal re-acceleration in Japan; the semi cycle as upside risk in Korea; and Taiwan's growing external excesses.

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East Asia Today

China's IP and services activity were stable in October, but were over-shadowed by another big drop in FAI. That can't be entirely dismissed, even though the data aren't so reliable. In Japan, services activity continues to trend up. In Korea, import prices are rising, but so are semi export prices.