ZCZC
BCN-27
JAPAN-S.KOREA-CAR-SALE
Japanese car sale in S.Korea tumbles 56.9 pct in August
SEOUL, Sept. 4, 2019 (BSS/Xinhua) – Japanese car sale in South Korea posted
a double-digit fall last month amid the ongoing campaign to boycott Japanese
products, caused by the trade spat between Seoul and Tokyo, industry data
showed Wednesday.
The number of Japanese vehicles registered here was 1,398 in August, down
56.9 percent from 3,247 tallied a year earlier, according to the Korea
Automobile Importers & Distributors Association (KAIDA).
The Japanese brand sale continued to decline since July when the no-buy
campaign began. The Japanese car sale diminished 17.2 percent over the year
to 2,674 units in July.
For the first eight months of this year, the sale of Japanese brands
slipped 0.7 percent to 27,554 compared with the same period of last year.
Japanese car sale here maintained a yearly growth from 2014 to 2018.
The boycott campaign began in July when Japan tightened regulation on its
export to South Korea of three materials vital to produce memory chips and
display panels, the mainstay of the South Korean export.
Japan removed South Korea last month from its whitelist of trusted trading
partners that are given preferential export procedure. In response, Seoul
dropped Tokyo off its whitelist of trusted export partners.
Influenced by weak demand for Japanese brands, the number of foreign luxury
car sale was 18,122 in August, down 5.6 percent from a year earlier. From the
previous month, it was down 6.8 percent.
During the January-August period, the imported vehicle sale contracted 18.3
percent to 146,889 compared with the same period of last year.
BSS/XINHUA/HR/1435