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 inv...