The Korea International Trade Association announced on January 24 that Korea imported diesel cars worth US$6.29314 billion, a record high, in 2015 in spite of the Volkswagen scandal. The amount increased by more than 28% from the previous high of US$4.90773 billion that had been recorded in 2014 and Korea posted its first trade deficit in this car market segment last year.
By engine displacement, the import of diesel cars with an engine displacement of 2,500 cc or less increased 22.9% from a year earlier to US$4.15942 billion while that of the rest showed an increase of 40.1% to US$2.13372 billion. Meanwhile, Korea’s diesel car export decreased by 15.7% to US$4.87747 billion in 2015. As a result, Korea posted a trade deficit of US$1.41567 billion in its trade of diesel vehicles. Last year, a total of 243,900 imported cars were sold in the Korean market and 167,925 of them, equivalent to 68.9%, were diesel cars.
The sales of imported diesel cars began to skyrocket in 2010. Specifically, the sales volume increased 7.3-fold from 23,006 to 167,925 between 2010 and 2015 while their ratio to imported cars jumped from 25.4% to 68.9% and the amount of imports soared from US$601.34 million to US$6.29314 billion.
The imports fell to US$409.39 million, much lower than the monthly average of last year at US$524.43 million, in October due to the Volkswagen scandal but rebounded to US$502.75 million and a record high of US$764.53 million in the following months. This was because importers launched aggressive marketing campaigns to win over consumers wishing to own imported cars at low prices.