From the article :

The root cause of the sell-offs stemmed from fluctuations in the race for AI market dominance in Asia and beyond, with fresh competition from China appearing to create severe downward pressure on key KOSPI stocks.

Shares in memory-chip giants Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix fell 13.4 percent and 14 percent, respectively, after reports emerged that Chinese companies were developing domestic deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography equipment.

Fragility amid the AI boom is continuing to impact many different global markets as investors become increasingly uncertain about the sky-high valuations of leading artificial intelligence players. Samsung and SK Hynix have price-to-earnings (P/E) ratios of between 18x and 24x, which have become commonplace amid the ongoing AI frenzy. But these higher ratios mean that stocks have found it more difficult to absorb market shocks.