APD | South Korea's Japanese beer imports plunge

By APD writer Alice

South Korea’s imports of Japanese beer nose-dived this month due to a boycott of products from the neighbor amid a bilateral trade dispute, showed data released by the Korea Customs Service on September 12.

The combined imports of Japanese beer in the first 10 days of this month fell a whopping 99.9 percent from a year earlier, according to the data.

Over the cited period, imports of Japanese cigarettes and beauty appliances also dropped 92.7 percent and 83 percent, respectively.

South Korea's imports of Japanese consumer goods, including processed foodstuffs and cosmetics, also edged down 2.8 percent on-year in August, the data also showed.

South Korean activists' groups have been carrying out a boycott of Japanese products here since July, after Tokyo abruptly declared to restrict Seoul’s exports of three industrial materials vital for the production of chips and displays.

Tokyo's abrupt step is widely seen as retaliation against last year's Supreme Court rulings ordering Japanese firms to compensate Korean victims of forced labor during Japan's 1910-45 brutal colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.

Japan claims that all compensation was settled when the two countries normalized their diplomatic ties in 1965, although the court ruled that individual rights to seek compensation are still valid.

(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)