Seoul shares sharply down late Fri. morning on profit taking

South Korean stocks extended losses late Friday morning as investors dumped tech shares to take profit from the previous session's sharp rally amid lingering woes on artificial intelligence (AI) investment. After opening 1.31 percent lower, the benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) extended losses, losing 501.16 points, or 5.61 percent, to 8,429.14 as of 11:20 a.m. Due to the sharp drop, the bourse operator activated a sell-side sidecar for the KOSPI around 11:13 a.m., halting program trading for five minutes. A sell-side sidecar is triggered when the KOSPI 200 Futures index decreases 5 percent or more for at least one minute. A selling spree by foreign and institutional investors weighed heavily on the market following a 5.42 percent spike the previous day. Wall Street was choppy as tech heavyweights finished in negative territory amid lingering concerns over the future of large-scale investment AI infrastructure. Latest data showed that U.S. consumer prices rose 4.1 percent in May, far higher than the Federal Reserve's 2 percent target, adding to projections that the centra