exports

Ukrainian reports of South Korean fuel exports to Russia come amid strained tensions between Seoul and Kyiv.

South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said the government will take legal action over illegal fuel shipments to Russia if allegations from an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy are confirmed.

The Foreign Ministry said on Thursday it had not confirmed whether South Korean fuel, including diesel, had been exported to Russia.

It added that exports of some products, such as diesel and jet fuel for commercial purposes, were not included in a South Korean exports control list to Russia.

On Wednesday, the South Korean presidential office dismissed a statement by Vladyslav Vlasiuk, an adviser to the Ukrainian president on sanctions policy, that 176,000 tonnes of fuel were shipped from South Korea to Russia via sanctioned tankers in July and August.

Ukraine’s top sanctions official said the alleged findings run counter to South Korea’s sanctions policy towards Russia.

“Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, our government has consistently implemented sanctions and export controls against Russia in close cooperation with the international community,” South Korean presidential spokesperson Kang Yu-jung said on Wednesday, according to the Yonhap news agency.

“We ask that Ukraine also refrain from distorting the relevant policies of the Republic of Korea without sufficient verification of the facts and making public remarks that can damage international trust,” she added.

Relations between South Korea and Ukraine have been strained for the past couple of weeks after Seoul accused Zelenskyy of having “unilaterally disclosed” to the United Nations General Assembly that Kyiv had transferred two North Korean prisoners of war to South Korea.

Seoul Korea demanded an official apology from Kyiv, claiming the Ukrainian president had breached a non-disclosure agreement. Kyiv said no such agreement was in place.

Pyongyang and Moscow, meanwhile, have deep ties, with the two countries having signed a mutual defence treaty in 2024. According to Ukrainian and South Korean estimates, about 14,000 to 15,000 North Korean soldiers were sent to support Russia’s war efforts against Ukraine.

North Korea and South Korea remain technically at war because the 1950–1953 Korean War ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty.

IRGC commander says oil flows through US-supervised route in Hormuz are ‘negligible’.

Crude oil exports from the Middle East have risen above pre-war levels on four of the seven days in the last week of September, provisional data from ship-tracking firm Kpler showed.

However, senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander Ali Fadavi said in a televised interview on Sunday night that only three to four million barrels of oil per day (bpd) are now moving through the route, dismissing the amount as “negligible” when compared with pre-war traffic.

Fadavi said, for the first time, no US vessels were present in the Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, the Sea of Oman or even the northern Indian Ocean and US warships are “100 percent vulnerable” to IRGC attacks.

Kpler data showed crude exports from the region exceeded pre-war levels on September 24 and between September 27 and 29, rising to 19.5-22.5 million bpd.

Around that time, Iran claimed success in attacking ships – including US Navy vessels – near the Strait of Hormuz, saying the strikes had forced Washington to move its warships further from the Iranian coast.

Before the US-Israel war on Iran began, exports averaged 18 million bpd between March 2025 and February 2026.

According to Kpler data, the overall tally for crude, oil products, chemicals and non-gas liquids averaged 22.4 million bpd in the seven days to September 30.

On October 1, the seven-day moving average for crude exports was at 18.5 million bpd. This includes transits via the Strait of Hormuz, the Red Sea, exports from terminals and ship-to-ship transfers in the Gulf of Oman.

The number of liquefied natural gas cargoes exiting the Strait of Hormuz also rose in September to its highest monthly level since February.

The figures exclude any vessels that might have crossed the strait with their automatic identification system transponders turned off to avoid detection.

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency reported at least one attack a day in the Strait of Hormuz or in the Gulf of Aden since October 2.

On Sunday, Iran’s top negotiator and parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said the Strait of Hormuz would remain closed until the United States accepts Tehran’s seven-day plan to reopen the waterway.

Middle East crude oil exports have rebounded to 17.5M bbl/day on a 10-day average, or 98% of pre-war levels, despite continued risks to shipping, J.P. Morgan analysts said this week, supported by restored flows through Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline and

Exports jump 83.5 percent to top $120bn for the first time amid ferocious semiconductor demand.

South Korea’s exports have surged to a monthly record amid explosive demand for chips used to power artificial intelligence.

Exports jumped 83.5 percent year-on-year to $120.9bn in September, eclipsing the previous monthly record of $102.25bn set in June, preliminary customs figures showed on Thursday.

Chip shipments accounted for nearly half of exports, soaring more than 260 percent to $60.3bn, according to data from the Korea Customs Service.

Total exports from January through September hit $814.5bn, exceeding those for all of 2025, when exports reached a record $709.7bn.

During the first nine months of the year, the country recorded a trade surplus of $49.85bn.

“This is a valuable achievement that once again demonstrates the strength of our industries and companies, and is thanks to the sweat and efforts of our entrepreneurs who have competed fiercely in the global market,” said Kim Jeong-kwan, South Korea’s minister for trade and industry, in a statement.

“While we expect to achieve $1 trillion in annual exports, the strengthening of global protectionism and tensions in the Middle East remain major variables affecting our exports,” Kim said.

South Korea’s economy has been running red-hot this year amid a global shortage of memory chips used in AI.

Asia’s fourth-largest economy is home to one of the world’s largest semiconductor industries, led by top memory chip makers SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics.

SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics together control roughly 80 percent of the global market for high-bandwidth memory and 60 percent of the market for dynamic random-access memory, according to Counterpoint Research.

South Korea’s nominal gross domestic product (GDP) growth hit a five-decade high in the April-June quarter, skyrocketing 26.4 percent year-on-year.

South Korea’s Ministry of Finance and Economy has forecast real GDP to grow 3 percent in 2026, which would be the strongest performance since 2017, excluding the outlier years of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The AI boom has also propelled the country’s stock market into the ranks of the best-performing bourses this year, with the benchmark Kospi rising nearly 60 percent.