Growing Fast
Last year, the size of Korea’s import car market was 76% of Japan.
The Japan Automobile Importers Association (JAIA) announced that in 2017, the number of import cars registered in Japan climbed 3.7 percent year on year to 306,088, according to foreign media outlets such as the Nihon Keizai Shimbun and the Korean import car industry.
According to the Korea Automobile Importers & Distributors Association, last year the annual sales volume of imported cars in Korea ran to 233,088 units, up 3.5% from the previous year. The size of Korea’s import car market leaped up to the 76% level of that of Japan.
"The growth of the import car market in Korea is very fast when taking into account the fact that the population of Japan was 126.7 million (more than double the population of South Korea) as of last year and that the income level of the Japanese people eclipsed that of Korea by about 10,000 US dollars per person,” an industry official said. If this growth rate holds, the Korean import car market will catch up with the Japanese import car market in a few years."
Only in 2004, import cars sold in Korea totaled 23,345 units which were 9.7% of 240,209 units of import cars sold in Japan. In terms of market sizes, the former accounted less than 10% of the latter but, in 13 years, the percentage grew by 66.4% points.