Yonhap noticed the Detroit News said something bad about Korea:
The new proposed free trade deal with South Korea is also sparking worries.
Levin and his fellow co-chair of the Senate Auto Caucus sent a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman saying he is troubled by past efforts to open up South Korea to U.S. autos in pacts in 1995 and 1998.
South Korea, one of the most closed auto markets in the world, protects its domestic industry, critics says, by such intimidating practices as launching tax audits of Koreans buying foreign cars. South Korea sold 731,000 autos in the United States, compared with only 4,000 U.S.-made cars sold there.
I don’t know if that’s true or not, but if it is and the Samcheong-dong neighborhood is anything to go by, the auditors must be having a busy time. Of course, very few of the foreign cars I see are American, but one might suspect that has more to do with American cars that Korean trade practices.
4 Comments
Figure Congress to be operating on yesterday’s news. This WAS a big issue - and a particularly noxious example of a non-tariff barrier to the entry of foreign goods into Korea — several years ago; but now the trolls at the NTC have bigger game in their sights, like Lonestar, et al.
It’s strange Germans and Japanese don’t have any trouble selling cars in Korea. Their numbers are increasing very quickly. Not many American cars around though. I think they’re too busy complaining rather than competing.
I’m trying to think of what kind of American car a Korean with too much money would want to buy and nothing comes to mind.
I guess music & entertainment types like those camper/van things with tinted windows.
The fact that sales of all foreign cars are minuscule shows it is a closed market. The fact that German and Japanese carmakers have a greater share of that small slice of the market than U.S. carmakers makes no difference.