KICK Korea Semiconductor Index ETF launches on NYSE Arca, giving US investors direct access to Korean chip giants

US investors now have a one-click way to bet on South Korea’s semiconductor ecosystem. The KICK Korea Semiconductor Index ETF, trading under the ticker KCHP, has begun trading on NYSE Arca, offering exposure to 20 companies listed on the Korea Exchange that span the entire chip value chain.

The fund covers memory, foundry, equipment, materials, packaging, and design firms, with marquee holdings in Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. Its net expense ratio sits at 0.65%, which is competitive for a single-country, single-sector international ETF.

What’s actually in the box

KCHP tracks a modified market-capitalization-weighted index. The modified weighting system caps single-stock exposure, spreading risk more evenly across the portfolio.

Samsung and SK Hynix remain the fund’s center of gravity. These two companies sit at the heart of the global memory chip market, producing the DRAM and NAND flash that powers everything from smartphones to the GPU clusters training large language models.

The remaining 18 holdings round out the Korean semiconductor supply chain, capturing the equipment makers, materials suppliers, and design houses that feed into the production of advanced chips. For investors who’ve been watching Korea’s chip sector from the sidelines, KCHP removes the friction of foreign brokerage accounts, currency conversion, and unfamiliar settlement cycles.

Why Korea, why now

South Korea is home to the world’s largest memory chip manufacturers, and its companies have been investing heavily in next-generation technologies like high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips that are essential for AI accelerators.

Samsung Electronics has been ramping up its foundry business to compete with TSMC, while SK Hynix has emerged as the dominant supplier of HBM chips to Nvidia.

Before KCHP, US investors who wanted targeted Korean semiconductor exposure had limited options. Broad emerging-market or Asia-Pacific ETFs dilute the chip exposure across dozens of sectors and countries. Single-stock ADRs for Samsung or SK Hynix exist, but they don’t capture the ecosystem of smaller suppliers and equipment makers that often move in tandem with the big names.

The risks investors should weigh

KCHP gives investors pure Korean semiconductor exposure with no geographic diversification, no sector diversification, and full exposure to the Korean won. The fund does not appear to hedge its currency exposure, meaning investors are implicitly taking a position on the won-dollar exchange rate whether they intend to or not.

Geopolitical risk also looms larger for single-country semiconductor funds. South Korea’s chip industry is deeply intertwined with both US and Chinese technology supply chains, where export controls, trade tensions, or shifts in industrial policy could create headwinds.

There’s also the cyclical nature of the memory chip business. Samsung and SK Hynix have historically experienced dramatic swings in profitability tied to memory pricing cycles. When supply outpaces demand, chip prices crater and margins compress.

As the inaugural product in the KICK ETFs series, KCHP fills a genuine gap in the US ETF landscape, giving investors a focused vehicle for a market that has been difficult to access efficiently.