Seoul shares rose on Wednesday with Intel Corp's upbeat fourth-quarter earnings outlook boosting technology stocks including Hynix Semiconductor Inc, but POSCO declined after weak quarterly results. The Korea Composite Stock Price Index ended up 0.43 percent at 1,876.15 points.
Technology plays advanced, buoyed by positive quarterly results and outlook from the world's largest chipmaker, Intel. Hynix Semiconductor, the world's No 2 memory chip maker, gained 3.5 percent, while Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, the world's No 1 memory chip maker, eased off earlier gains to fall 0.3 percent.
POSCO retreated 4 percent after the world's No 3 steelmaker issued disappointing third-quarter results and weak outlook comments late on Tuesday. Elsewhere, shares in the renewable energy sector jumped after a South Korean presidential task force said on Wednesday that South Korea will spend 40 trillion won ($35.4 billion) by 2015 in a combined push by the public and private sector to boost its renewable energy sources.
Shares in Yonghyun Base Materials and Hyunjin Materials, both makers of wind power facility parts, jumped 7.3 percent and 6.6 percent respectively. Shipbuilders rose, buoyed by a firm 0.9 percent gain in the Baltic Dry Index, which tracks the cost of shipping key commodities. Hyundai Heavy Industries Co Ltd, the world's biggest shipbuilder, rose 1.7 percent and Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co Ltd advanced 2.2 percent.