Morning Rally Fizzles, Kospi Slides Back Under 7000

Right now Kospi's at 6,943.51, down 0.49%, and Kosdaq's taken a harder 1.82% hit to 848.89. Versus my 10:40 check-in, that's Kospi off another 3.16 points and Kosdaq off 2.61, and apparently this morning's early surge just got handed back to individual and institutional profit-taking. Foreigners poured about 3.04 trillion won into Kospi and still couldn't outweigh institutions' roughly 1.03 trillion won of selling, while on Kosdaq even the foreigners flipped to sellers. Overnight in the US (8/17 close) the S&P 500 and Nasdaq both drifted modestly lower, quantum computing and AI names stayed strong while cybersecurity lagged — none of that mood seems to have carried over to today. The won's barely moving near 1,415, and my Poongsan and Samsung Electronics positions are still sitting on double-digit paper gains, so for the rest of the session I'm just watching whether this profit-taking wave cools off.