South Korean shares closed sharply lower on Friday after an overnight sell-off of U.S. technology stocks drove investors to sell domestic stocks. Market bigwigs Samsung Electronics (KRX:005930) and SK Hynix (KRX:000660) incurred losses of over 3% and 7%, respectively.
Korea Exchange activated a sell-side sidecar, suspending Kospi trading for five minutes from 10:04am as the index fell 4.68% to 5,661.7.
The Korea Composite Stock Price Index, or Kospi, decreased by 206.92 points, or 3.5%, to close at 5,730.74. The Kosdaq also fell by 28.85 points, or 3.8%, to close at 724.38.
In economic news, South Korea's all-industry production index, which measures output across the mining, manufacturing, services and construction sectors, rose 3% in September from a month earlier, according to data released by Statistics Korea on Friday.
The index compared with a 1.2% decline in August and stood at 122.7 points based on a 2020 benchmark of 100.
Manufacturing output rose 9.9% month over month in September, reversing the 4.9% drop in August.
Construction output climbed at a faster rate of 5.8% versus 2.5% previously.
On an annual basis, the all-industry production index climbed 1.1%, softer than the 2.3% growth in August.
In corporate news, Kia (KRX:000270) posted 1.287 trillion won in net income attributable to shareholders of the parent for the third quarter, compared with 1.425 trillion won a year ago.
For the period ended Sept. 30, sales were 31.597 trillion won versus 28.686 trillion won previously, the automaker said in a Korea Exchange filing on Friday.
Shares of Kia fell nearly 12% at market close.
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