{"id":77,"date":"2013-06-02T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-06-02T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yule-tide.generalsemiotics.net\/index.php\/2013\/06\/02\/post-70-koreans-finally-buying-foreign-cars\/"},"modified":"2013-06-02T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-06-02T00:00:00","slug":"post-70-koreans-finally-buying-foreign-cars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/2013\/06\/02\/post-70-koreans-finally-buying-foreign-cars\/","title":{"rendered":"Post-70: Koreans, Finally, Buying Foreign Cars"},"content":{"rendered":"
In late 2009, my then-boss in Ilsan<\/a> bought a new Volkswagen SUV. I was surprised that she bought a foreign car. At the time, I interpreted it as luxury purchase. Due to tariffs on foreign cars, a Korean buying a foreign car was engaging in overt conspicuous-consumption, I thought.<\/span><\/p>\n

It seems that my boss <\/span>was on the cusp of a trend, back in 2009. According to the Korea Herald<\/a><\/em>, foreign carmakers’ “market share” in South Korea (which I assume to mean the percent of cars on the road) has increased as follows:<\/p>\n

Share of Foreign Cars on the Road in South Korea<\/span><\/strong><\/font>
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 4.7% : Mid-2009<\/strong><\/span>
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 6.7%<\/span> : Mid-2010 <\/strong>[+2.0% market-share]
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 7.4%<\/span> : Mid-2011 <\/strong>[+0.7%]
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 10%<\/span> : Mid-2012<\/strong> [+2.6%]
<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 11.7%: April 2013<\/strong> [On track to be +2.0% for Mid-2013 over Mid-2012]<\/p>\n

Soon, one-in-eight cars on the roads of South Korea will be of foreign origin. My former-boss was one of those responsible, as her purchase helped push the foreign-car-share past <\/span>the 5%-threshold back in 2009.<\/p>\n

South Korea’s long-tightly-protected car market may finally be opening up, perhaps partly due to the Free Trade Agreements. Then again, these foreign cars seem to me to be all “high-end”. (Americans don’t think of VW as a “luxury brand”, but in Korea it rather is. So is Ford; the few I see are “high-end”.) There is a street in Gangnam that is lined with glamorous stores selling glamorous foreign cars, displayed in their windows [as is usual here]. If this is the “image”\/”market” for foreign-cars, then growth will slow and stop. <\/p>\n

<\/span>The USA, by comparison, has a 60% foreign-car share<\/a>. (60% of cars on U.S. roads are not made by U.S. companies).\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In late 2009, my then-boss in Ilsan bought a new Volkswagen SUV. I was surprised that she bought a foreign car. At the time, I interpreted it as luxury purchase. Due to tariffs on foreign cars, a Korean buying a foreign car was engaging in overt conspicuous-consumption, I thought. It seems that my boss was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}