South Korea Metal Prices Today
Prices in Won (KRW) · Reference market: Closed SGX
South Korea imports almost every gram of metal its electronics and shipbuilding industries consume — a resource-poor country running some of the world's most metal-hungry factories.
Gold Price — Last 30 Days
Manufacturing Without Mining
Samsung's chip fabs, Hyundai's car plants and the country's shipyards all consume enormous quantities of copper, aluminium and precious metals for electronics — almost none of it mined domestically, making South Korea's demand a fairly direct read on the health of its export manufacturing sector.
A Won-Denominated Retail Market of Its Own
The Korea Exchange (KRX) runs its own domestic gold market, separate from the international benchmarks, giving South Korean retail buyers and jewellers a won-priced reference alongside the internationally-derived prices shown here.
The Chips Need More Than Just Silicon
South Korea's semiconductor industry doesn't just consume silicon — its display and chip fabs are major global buyers of minor metals like indium (for ITO touchscreen coatings) and gallium (for compound semiconductors), putting South Korea in direct competition with Japan and China's own electronics sector for the same thin, concentrated supply of metals most people have never heard of.
Metals & Mining Industry
South Korea mines almost nothing, but it runs some of the world's biggest metal-refining operations on imported ore. LS-Nikko Copper's Onsan smelter is among the largest single-site copper smelters anywhere, converting imported concentrate into refined copper for export rather than domestic ore into anything. Korea Zinc operates on a similar scale for zinc and lead, refining imported concentrate at a volume that makes it one of the largest non-ferrous smelting operations in the world. POSCO, meanwhile, turns entirely imported iron ore and coking coal into some of the highest-volume steel production on the planet — refining capacity substituting for a mining industry that barely exists.
Consumption & Trade
Korean shipbuilders — Hyundai Heavy Industries, Samsung Heavy Industries, Hanwha Ocean — are consistently among the top few globally by tonnage, and shipbuilding alone consumes enormous volumes of steel plate. The bigger recent shift is batteries: LG Energy Solution, Samsung SDI and SK On rank among the world's largest EV battery makers, turning South Korea into a major buyer of lithium, cobalt and nickel on top of the copper and aluminium its electronics and auto sectors already need. None of those battery metals are mined domestically, so South Korea's import dependency has grown alongside its battery industry rather than shrinking.
Metals Produced & Consumed Here
Which of this site's tracked metals South Korea is a notable producer or consumer of, based on each metal's own profile.
Did You Know?
During South Korea's 1997-98 financial crisis, ordinary citizens donated household gold jewellery to help the government meet its debts — a striking example of gold's cultural role beyond pure investment.
Sources
- KRX Gold Market launched 2014 — South Korean Gold Market (2014)
- 1997-98 gold-collecting campaign, 227 tonnes from ~3.5 million citizens — Gold-collecting campaign (1998)
- LS-Nikko Copper's Onsan smelter among the largest single-site copper smelters — Largest copper smelters (2015)
Frequently Asked Questions
The gold price in South Korea today is ₩195,150.68 per gram as of September 21, 2026, converted from the live international spot rate into KRW.
No — South Korea has little domestic mining and instead imports metals in bulk for its electronics, shipbuilding and automotive industries.
Prices for South Korea are shown in Won (KRW), converted daily from live international spot rates — not a fixed or manually-updated exchange rate.
SGX (Singapore Exchange) is the nearest tracked reference market for South Korea. This doesn't mean prices on this site are sourced directly from it — see its market profile for how it actually works.
