This undated file photo shows cans of Japanese beer on display at a Seoul convenience store. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, March 7 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s imports of Japanese beer hit the highest level in more than three years in January amid a waning anti-Japan campaign here, data showed Tuesday.
The country brought in slightly over US$2 million worth of Japanese beer in January, up a whopping 315 percent from a year earlier, according to the data from the Korea Customs Service and the liquor industry.
It marks the largest monthly figure since July 2019, a month before South Koreans launched a boycott of Japanese goods in protest of Tokyo’s export restrictions of some materials for chips and displays to Seoul.
Japan made the move as South Korea’s top court ordered two Japanese companies to compensate Korean victims of Japan’s wartime forced labor in 2018. Japan colonized the Korean Peninsula from 1910-45.
Imports of Japanese beer were just above $4 million in July 2019, but tumbled to $223,000 a month later before bottoming out at $6,000 in September that year.
But imports of Japanese beer have been growing amid a weakening anti-Japan sentiment in Asia’s fourth-largest economy.
Japanese beer imports reached $1.5 million in March 2022, topping the $1 million mark for the first time since July 2019. Imports of Japanese beer hovered above the $1 million mark for eight months running since May last year.
Japanese beer imports more than doubled to over $14 million last year from $6.9 million a year earlier.
Yet, Japanese beer accounted for a mere 7.4 percent of South Korea’s total beer imports last year, which paled to the 25.3 percent in 2018, a year before Japan’s export curbs.
(Yonhap)
