Korea Vehicle Sales : 1990-99

In a recent Australian car magazine it waxed lyrical about the Korean car industry. They had a Clark Kent style of man ripping his shirt apart to reveal a Korean flag on his chest. Call me cynical but I didn't buy the amazing rise of the industry because I know how much help it got and continues to get. Certainly Korea makes cars in goodly numbers but it is protected domestically by inordinate tariff barriers and has had government subsidies to help it along as well. No wonder it's so successful.

Of course it still has to make cars desirable in those markets that it has to genuinely compete and that has been achieved. The point I make is with the home market safely in its grasp, the profit made from that gives it a strong advantage.

Below in the chart we see Korean domestic sales by group. Hyundai and Hyundai Precision make up the first column. This is the most successful part of the Korean car industry. Through the 1990's it accounted for between 43-50% of local vehicle sales.

Then there is Kia and Asia Motors, the latter purchased by Kia in 1976 and gradually phased out. Kia itself filed for bankruptcy in 1997 and Hyundai moved in to become a shareholder and rescue it. It's share of the market varied form 21% to 35% over this decade.

Daewoo Motors was an ambitious company which along with Daewoo Heavy Industries had a reasonable share of domestic sales. It took over the troubled SsangYong company in 1998 but as that lasted only two years, SsangYong remains part of the 'Others' section. Daewoo/DHI ranged from 15 to 26% of the market.

Other Korean was mainly SsangYong which at best reached 9%. Also Samsung came along in 1998, but by 1999 it was already in trouble due to the Asian financial crisis. Lastly imports had just started and struggled to get 1% of sales due to the duties imposed. Would imports remain a rare treat for a privileged few?

	Hyundai	%	Kia	%	Daewoo	%	Other	%	Imports	%	Total
Yr	HDP		Asia		DHI		Korean
90	450,200	47	334,100	35	147,400	15	22,600	2	2,300	0	956,600
91	515,800	47	374,700	34	189,200	17	24,500	2	1,700	0	1,105,900
92	586,900	46	438,300	34	223,500	18	19,700	2	1,800	0	1,270,200
93	653,600	45	485,700	34	278,000	19	18,700	1	2,000	0	1,438,000
94	759,000	49	446,600	29	310,300	20	39,700	3	3,900	0	1,559,500
95	784,300	50	473,000	30	256,500	17	42,100	3	6,900	0	1,562,800
96	795,900	48	488,100	29	300,500	18	59,600	4	10,300	1	1,654,400
97	710,100	47	374,600	25	366,800	24	61,500	4	8,100	1	1,521,100
98	335,400	43	166,800	21	204,300	26	73,500	9	2,100	0	782,100
99	570,500	45	348,600	27	257,600	20	96,300	8	2,400	0	1,275,400

For the other two in the series, please click on the dates: 2000-09, 2010-17.
Picture credit: Ki hoon.