South Korea’s auto industry has become increasingly dependent on China for parts, leading to calls for supply chain diversification.
Cho Chul, an analyst with the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade (KIET), a government-funded think tank, recently highlighted how automobile parts imports from China have increased over the past two decades.
“China only accounted for 1.8 percent of [South Korea’s automobile parts imports] in 2000, but that share had jumped to 36.2 percent by the first four months of 2022. In contrast, Japan’s share of auto part imports has declined from 45.5 percent in 2000 to 11.1 percent in the first quarter of this year,” said Cho reported local media Hankyoreh….