In June, a story about a young Korean woman went viral on Chinese social media. She supposedly called it the best summer of her adult life. She had found a job, made several years' salary in the stock market and could afford spontaneous overseas trips. One day in Seoul, the story went, strangers suddenly stopped in the street to celebrate together, giving her the "illusion of a golden age of humanity." The post became a meme in China partly because it captured how many Chinese were looking at Korea this summer. Tourists saw Seoul as energetic and fashionable. Investors saw something else: one of the world's hottest equity markets, powered by an artificial intelligence boom and a spectacular rally driven by Samsung Electronics and SK hynix. Korea suddenly commanded an unusual amount of attention on Chinese financial social media. I happened to be watching all this from Seoul. I arrived in mid-May as a Chinese exchange reporter at The Korea Times. June was unusually eventful: labor unrest at Samsung, local elections, football fever, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang's much-watched visit and new natio