An Oklahoma City investment firm has opened a new gateway for American investors to cash in on South Korea's semiconductor boom. Exchange Traded Concepts, working with Kiwoom Securities (USA), announced Monday the launch of the KICK Korea Semiconductor Index ETF, trading under the ticker KCHP on NYSE Arca, giving U.S. investors targeted access to Korea's chip industry through a single U.S.-listed fund.
The new fund tracks an index of 20 semiconductor companies listed on the Korea Exchange, spanning memory, foundry, equipment, materials, packaging and design, and includes both Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix among its holdings, according to The Journal Record. Under a white-label arrangement filed with federal regulators, Kiwoom Securities USA serves as the fund's sponsor and brand manager while Exchange Traded Concepts, headquartered in Oklahoma City, handles the underlying fund management, compliance and administrative work, as reported by Sedaily. That kind of white-labeling lets a foreign financial institution launch a U.S.-listed fund quickly without building its own domestic regulatory infrastructure from scratch.
“Focused access to Korea's semiconductor market has historically been difficult for many U.S. investors,” said Garrett Stevens, per the Journal Record's reporting. Yoon Gu Eric Lee added that the underlying index captures equipment, materials and design companies supporting Korea's memory and foundry sectors, according to the same account. Investors can buy and sell shares through standard brokerage accounts, and the fund does not require opening a foreign account or trading directly on the Korea Exchange.
How the Fund Avoids Chipmaker Overload
KCHP uses a modified market-capitalization weighting method designed to limit exposure to any single company, according to the Journal Record's report. SEC prospectus disclosures spell out the mechanics: the underlying Akros Korea Semiconductor Index caps individual stock weights at 20%, and mandates that companies with a 4.5% weight or greater cannot collectively exceed 45% of the total index portfolio, according to PublicNow. That structure keeps Samsung and SK Hynix from swallowing the whole fund while still leaving room for smaller equipment, packaging and materials firms further down Korea's supply chain.
SEC registration documents also lay out strict eligibility filters: index components must be listed on the KOSPI or KOSDAQ exchanges, carry a minimum market capitalization of $200 million, and clear minimum three-month average daily trading volume thresholds, per StockTitan. Those liquidity filters are meant to protect a passive ETF from getting stuck holding illiquid shares when it rebalances smaller constituents.
An Oklahoma City Firm's Track Record With Korean Funds
Exchange Traded Concepts was founded in 2009 and now manages roughly $23 billion in regulatory assets across more than 200 fund launches, according to Private Fund Data. KCHP is not the firm's first foray into a South Korean industry theme. ETC previously issued Hanwha Asset Management's PLUS Korea Defense Industry Index ETF, ticker KDEF, in February 2025, and that fund had surpassed 100 billion won, or roughly $74.7 million, in net assets by early 2026, per Chosun Biz. The pattern suggests the Oklahoma City firm has built a niche partnering with Seoul-based asset managers to bring thematic Korean funds to U.S. exchanges.
The economic backdrop helps explain the timing. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix together controlled more than 60% of the global DRAM market as of the second quarter of 2026, according to Counterpoint Research. HBM has become an indispensable component paired with advanced AI graphics processors, and SK Hynix surpassed Samsung to become Korea's most valuable listed company for the first time since 2000, per Tom's Hardware.
Export Boom Meets a Power Grid Squeeze
South Korea's semiconductor exports hit a record $297.68 billion, or 400.5 trillion won, through September 10, already far surpassing the full-year 2025 record of 233.3 trillion won, according to data from the South Korea Customs Service reported by BigGo Finance. But the fab expansion fueling that boom is running into a domestic energy bottleneck, according to 24/7 Wall St.
KCHP's returns will also move with currency swings. Because the fund's underlying holdings are denominated in Korean won, U.S. investors' returns are affected by exchange-rate movements on top of the concentration risk that comes with betting on a single country's industry, according to regulatory filings cited in a PR Newswire release. The fund's structure sets it apart from broader South Korea equity funds by narrowing exposure specifically to the semiconductor supply chain rather than the country's stock market as a whole. The launch gives U.S. investors access to Korea's semiconductor supply chain.
