South Korea & Japan: South Korea reduces Japanese beer imports in August by 97%

South Korean imports of Japanese beer fell 97 percent in August from a year earlier due to a boycott of Japanese products amid a bilateral trade spat, the Yonhap News reported on September 16.

The value of imports of Japanese beer came to US$223,000 in August, compared with $7.56 million in the same period of last year, according to the data from the Korea Customs Service (KCS).

The sharp decline came as many South Korean consumers joined a boycott of Japanese goods in anger at Tokyo's trade curbs against Seoul.

In July, Tokyo imposed tighter regulations on exports to Seoul of three materials -- resist, etching gas and fluorinated polyimide -- that are critical for the production of semiconductors and flexible displays.

Japan later removed South Korea from its "whitelist" of trusted trading partners in retaliation against last year's South Korean Supreme Court rulings ordering Japanese firms to compensate South Korean victims of forced labor during Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.

Japan claims that all compensation was settled when the two countries normalized their diplomatic ties in 1965.

17 September, 2019