[THE INVESTOR] The online shopping business in Korea has expanded more than 16-fold over the past 15 years due to the rapid development of online transactions, government data showed on June 16.
Total online sales reached 53.9 trillion won ($46.1 billion) last year, compared with 3.3 trillion won in 2001, with an average 22 percent on-year growth every year, according to Statistics Korea.
Mobile shopping amounted to 24.5 trillion won in 2015, more than tripling from 6.6 trillion won in 2013 when the agency started to collect such data.
photo source: 123rf.
Online shopping sales accounted for 14.6 percent of the nation’s total retail sales of 369.2 trillion won in 2015, up from an 8.2 percent share in 2010.
The number of high-speed Internet subscribers surpassed 20 million last year, with 43.7 million people using smartphones in a country with a population of 50 million.
Tour packages and reservation services were the most popular items on online shopping malls, with 10 trillion won in sales in 2015, followed by clothing with 8.5 trillion won and daily goods with 6.7 trillion won, according to the data.
(
theinvestor@heraldcorp.com)