SEOUL, June 2 (Xinhua) -- The portion of mobile shopping in South Korea to the total online shopping hit a new monthly high as consumers continued to expand shopping with smartphones in cyberspace, a government report showed Friday.
The total online shopping stood at 6.08 trillion won (5.4 billion U.S. dollars) in April, up 21.1 percent from a year earlier, according to Statistics Korea.
The mobile shopping through smartphones surged 42.2 percent to 3.68 trillion won in April, accounting for 60.6 percent of the total online shopping.
It marked the first time that the portion of smartphone shopping surpassed 60 percent.
Dependence continued to increase on smartphones for shopping in the cyberspace as the number of smartphone users in South Korea spread from the younger generation to the elderly.
Compared with the previous month, cosmetics sales on the Internet tumbled 20.3 percent in April due to the fall in Chinese tourists visiting South Korea.
Chinese travelers to South Korea tended to buy cosmetics in the cyberspace after visiting offline stores as online sales provided discounts.
