South Korea's Kospi index fell by as much as 1.6% before paring some losses. The country's leading chipmakers, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, saw weak performance due to market concerns over declining demand. This followed the introduction of a new compression technology for large language models and vector search engines by Google researchers.

Samsung dropped 2.1%, while SK Hynix declined 2.5%, making them the primary contributors to the Kospi's decline.

During early trading, both domestic and foreign investors were net sellers of Kospi constituent stocks, while retail investors were net buyers.

The small-cap Kosdaq index rose 0.6%.

The drop in the Kospi index has narrowed its year-to-date gain to approximately 32%.