Part I: The problem

2. The wall

Try to buy Samsung or SK Hynix from the US and you hit a stack of barriers that has nothing to do with the company and everything to do with the market it lives in.

The Korean won is not deliverable outside Korea, so a Korean trade cannot settle without Korean plumbing. Opening the account means custodian paperwork designed for institutions. Disclosures are in Korean until 2027. Dividends lose 22% by default unless you file treaty forms almost nobody has heard of.

SK Hynix, arguably the most important company in the AI supply chain, delisted its ADR years ago. There is not even a wrapper to buy. And because index providers still file Korea under emerging markets, trillions of dollars of developed-market mandates are not allowed to touch it at all.

China is the same wall, taller. Onshore shares require a license retail investors will never have. The yuan does not move freely across the border. Many Chinese companies that list abroad do it through structures where foreigners own a contract rather than the company. And on top of the Chinese wall sits an American one: sanctions lists, delisting laws, outbound investment rules.

Run every corridor between the US, Korea and China and the pattern repeats. Capital wants the exposure. The asset wants the capital. A layer of plumbing sits in between, and the plumbing always wins.