Asia witnessed sharp declines in Japan and South Korea following a sell-off of technology stocks on Wall Street.

South Korea's Kospi gave up 4.5%, to 7,730.82, after surging the day before. Samsung Electronics, which makes memory and logic chips and is the country's most valuable company, sank 6.1%. Shares of chipmaker SK Hynix tumbled 7.5%.

Tokyo's Nikkei 225 dropped 1.9% to 64,179.27, after data showed Japan's producer price index, a measure for prices at the wholesale level, rose 6.3% in May from a year before. That's the fastest pace in more than three years.

Shares of technology and telecommunications giant SoftBank Group, which has a strong AI focus, lost 8.3%. Chip equipment maker Advantest lost 4.2%, but Tokyo Electron advanced 3.2%.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng fell 0.6% to 24,407.96, while the Shanghai Composite index slipped 0.4% to 3,993.23. Official data released Wednesday showed that China's producer prices rose to nearly a four-year high of 3.9% in May compared with a year earlier.


Australia's S&P/ASX 200 traded 0.6% higher to 8,653.30.

Taiwan's Taiex was 3.3% lower, while India's Sensex climbed 0.8%.