South Koreans’ direct purchases from overseas e-commerce sites surged more than 40 percent on year in the first half of this year in terms of volume on rising demand for Chinese electronics products and health supplements from the United States.

According to data released by Korea Customs Service on Tuesday, the number of Koreans’ overseas direct purchases increased 42 percent on year to 21.23 million in the January-June period. Total value of transactions also jumped 20 percent to $1.58 billion during the same period. This is notable when considering Korea’s total imports fell 4 percent on year to $252.3 billion over the same period.

The surge in overseas direct purchases is mainly driven by rising demand for cheaper electronics goods from China and health supplements from the U.S.

The number of direct purchases of electronics products from China reached 2.16 million in the first half of this year, more than double from 880,000 last year, data showed. Among the products directly purchased from China were wireless earphones (25 percent) and air purifiers (8 percent). In particular, direct purchases of earphones jumped from 43,419 packages last year to 546,317 this year. Korean consumers were also involved in 4,295 transaction cases of electric scooters, up from 1,317 during the same period.

The most popular overseas direct purchase item among Koreans was health supplements from the U.S. Koreans purchased a total 3.73 million health supplement products from U.S. e-commerce sites in the January-June period, up 43 percent from the same period last year.

By country, the U.S. was the biggest seller with a 46 percent share in terms of volume, although a 19-percentage point fall from three years ago when it accounted for 65 percent in 2016. The second-largest seller was China with a 33 percent share in the January-June period, up 22 percentage points from 2016.

By item, 4.56 million products shipped by foreign sellers in the first six months of this year were of dietary supplements, up 48 percent from the same period a year ago, followed by 3.29 million deliveries of apparels, up 72 percent, and 3 million of electronic goods, up 78 percent, data showed.

By Choi Hee-seok and Lee Eun-joo

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