'I lost $14,000 in a month': Investors hit by Korean stock market's wild swings

Bank worker Yongjoon Kim lost 20 million Korean won ($14,000; £10,500) on the South Korean stock market last month.

Kim's money was meant to help buy a home, as he is getting married later this year.

"It's going to sting and I'm going to have to work really hard to make up for this," Kim says. "But for others who have taken more risk, they're going to feel the pain."

Many of his friends are worse off, and now in a "desperate" situation after "going all in" with their savings, he says.

While plenty of investors are piling into technology stocks, sharp market swings mean the bets don't always pay off, with prices often moving on every major headline.

Nowhere is that instability more pronounced than in South Korea's tech-heavy Kospi, widely regarded as the world's most volatile stock index.

A global frenzy around artificial intelligence has driven wild swings in the value of the country's biggest chipmakers.

The Kospi faced "one of the sharpest corrections" in its history between June and August, comparable to the drops seen during Covid-19 and the 1997 Asian financial crisis, says Wee Khoon Chong from financial services company BNY.

The index more than doubled its value since the start of the year to rise above 9,000 points in mid-June, before plunging to 5,500 within a few weeks. It has now recovered some ground to about 6,800 points.

A key reason for the sell-off in recent weeks has been concerns over the huge amounts of money being spent on AI, Chong adds.

The slump has had a big impact on many of the country's personal investors who bought tech stocks over the past year.

For Woongsa Kim, a look at his shares trading app is a painful reminder of what he had made then lost by investing in the South Korean stock market.