South Korea's car exports to US hit record high in 2023

South Korea’s car exports to the US surged 44.6% on-year to a record high of $32.2 billion in 2023, making up the lion’s share of South Korean exports to the country, according to the Korea International Trade Association on Friday.

South Korea shipped a total of 1.17 million cars to the US from January to November last year, hitting the 1 million unit milestone for the first time since it exported 1.07 million units to the world’s second-largest car market in 2015.

Exports of eco-friendly models such as electric vehicles, hybrids and plug-in hybrid cars to the US soared 62.3% on-year to $9.9 billion in 2023 during the same period.

EVs accounted for half the value at $5 billion, up 83.9% from a year earlier. Hybrid car exports shot up 55% on-year to $3.9 billion.

In comparison, plug-in hybrid car shipments to the US gained 3.1% to $1 billion over the same period.

The figures exclude Korean-brand cars manufactured in the US.

Despite the whopping export growth, South Korean carmakers saw a market share decline in US imports of EVs and hybrid cars in the first 11 months of last year.

South Korea’s shipments commanded 23.5% of US EV imports in terms of value, down 1.3 percentage points, coming in second after Germany.

For hybrid models, South Korea’s share of US imports decreased 5 percentage points to 21.4%, the second largest after Japan. But its gap with third-place Canada narrowed to 0.2 percentage point.

COMBUSTION ENGINE CARS

Combustion engine cars also made a big contribution to South Korea's export growth to the US.

Their shipments to the US spiked 39.4% on-year to $22.3 billion. Small cars drove the export growth, up 96.1% on-year to $6.9 billion. Full-size car shipments added 43.2% to $6.4 billion.

In 2023, automobiles and automotive parts topped the country's export items, trailed by petrochemical products, batteries and computer components.

In comparison, mobile phones and components ranked 10th, up 30.4% on-year by value. It marked their first on-year shipment growth to the US since 2017.

Write to Jae-Fu Kim at hu@hankyung.com

Yeonhee Kim edited this article.