What's actually happening with South Korea's market right now

Been digging into the Korea situation and honestly, the whole thing is kind of wild once you look past the P/E ratios. SK Hynix at 5x forward earnings looks like a deal, and maybe it is. But this selloff isn't really a fundamentals story. It's a leverage blow-up, and the Korean government basically spent the last six years pouring gas on the fire. Back in 2020, when covid hit and foreigners dumped Korean stocks, local retail traders jumped in. But then the government started calling them patriotic heroes. They banned short selling, made margin easier to get, lowered taxes. The whole vibe was "don't worry, we got you, just keep buying." And people did. Fast forward a few years and they're still at it. Tax breaks for pulling money out of foreign stocks and dumping it into Samsung and SK Hynix. The national pension fund loaded up on these two names until it was way over its own limits, and instead of selling, they just rewrote the limits. Then in May this year, someone had the bright idea to launch leveraged ETFs on Samsung and SK Hynix. The pitch was basically "let's make Korean stocks more exciting so people stop buying US tech and crypto." More than 90% of the buyers were retail. Now those ETFs have to sell every time the market drops, which makes the market drop more, and it forces more selling.