South Korea finds itself at a familiar crossroads in the long story of industrial nations: the moment when extraordinary success in a single domain begins to look less like strength and more like exposure. In August, the country's semiconductor exports reached a record $46.65 billion — a 209% annual surge — as AI-hungry cloud giants like Google and Amazon absorbed chips at an unprecedented pace, pulling nearly half of South Korea's entire export economy behind them. Economists are not questioning the achievement so much as the architecture beneath it, asking whether a foundation built so heavi