Seoul shares trade up late Fri. morning after Nvidia leadership turmoil

SEOUL, Nov. 13 (Yonhap) -- South Korean stocks traded higher late Friday morning as investors absorbed the departure of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang after revelations of his multiple affairs.

Opening 2.05 percent higher, the benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) rose 79.26 points, or 1.48 percent, to 5,421.99 as of 11:20 a.m.

Overnight, Nvidia's board ousted its founder and CEO Huang, dragging down the chip giant's shares by more than 4 percent.

However, shares of Nvidia's competitors, including Broadcom, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Alphabet, moved higher, indicating that the market expects demand for artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure to continue even after Huang's departure.

In Seoul, tech shares led the bullish mode.

Samsung Electronics rose 1.92 percent, and its chipmaking rival SK hynix advanced 1.66 percent.

Hanmi Semiconductor, a leading chip equipment maker, gained 1.81 percent, and Samsung Electro-Mechanics, the electronic component affiliate of Samsung Electronics, climbed 0.68 percent.

Leading pharma Celltrion increased 1.91 percent, and major shipbuilder Hanwha Ocean jumped 4.06 percent.

The Korean won was trading at 1,333.5 won against the U.S. dollar as of 11:20 a.m., up 2.3 won from the previous stock trading session's close.