SEOUL, Oct. 4 (Xinhua) -- The sale of Japanese cars in South Korea tumbled last month on the continued campaign here to boycott Japanese products, industry data showed Friday.
The number of Japanese vehicles registered here in September was 1,103, down 59.8 percent from the same month of last year, according to the Korea Automobile Importers & Distributors Association (KAIDA).
The falling pace got faster for the past three months as the Japanese model sale slumped 17.2 percent in July and 56.9 percent in August respectively.
The contraction came amid the ongoing campaign to boycott Japanese products, caused by the trade feud between Seoul and Tokyo.
Japan tightened control in July over its export to South Korea of three materials, vital to manufacture memory chips and display panels that are the mainstay of the South Korean export.
In August, Japan dropped South Korea off its whitelist of trusted trading partners that are given preferential export procedure. In response, Seoul also removed Tokyo from its whitelist of trusted export partners.
For the first nine months of this year, the number of Japanese vehicles sold here was 28,657, down 6.1 percent from the same period of last year.
The Japanese car sale here kept growing for the past five years through 2018.
Meanwhile, the total number of foreign luxury vehicles sold here was 20,204 in September, up 17.3 percent from a year earlier.
It was attributed to strong demand for German brands. German automaker Mercedes-Benz sold 7,707 cars here in September, almost tripling compared with the same month of last year.
The sale of BMW models more than doubled to 4,249 in the month, with the Audi sale growing in double figures to 1,996 last month.
