This file photo shows a customer picking a wine. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Dec. 17 (Korea Bizwire) – About 8 in 10 South Korean consumers turned out to have positive attitudes towards the free trade agreements (FTAs) that the country has signed with multiple countries, a consumer watchdog said Wednesday.
According to a survey conducted by the Korea Consumer Agency of 3,168 local consumers over the age of 25, 83.2 percent of the respondents said that FTAs had a positive impact from the perspective of consumer welfare.
Roughly three-quarters of the respondents said that FTAs have an overall positive impact on the domestic market.
The share of the respondents who said FTAs have contributed to expanding consumers’ choice of import goods and those who said FTAs have contributed to lowering sales prices stood at 89.4 percent and 59.5 percent, respectively.
The survey also looked into how local consumers feel about the impact of FTAs on the diversity of choice, price and quality, factors that have an impact on consumer welfare, for 41 consumer import items.
Among the respondents, 88.7 percent said that FTAs contributed to expanding the diversity of choice for beer, followed by wine (85.7 percent) and lipstick (82.3 percent).
Another 86.3 percent of the respondents said that they were willing to repurchase import wines, followed by cars (81.4 percent) and perfume (81.3 percent).
Ashley Song (ashley@koreabizwire.com)
