SEOUL, Oct. 10 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's video game market reached over 7 trillion won (US$6 billion) for the first time in its history last year on strong growth of its online game market, a government report said Monday.

According to the report by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the country's video game market reached 7.43 trillion won in 2010, up 12.9 percent from 6.58 trillion won the previous year.

The growth was largely led by an expansion of its online game community, which amounted to some 4.76 trillion won, making up over 64 percent of the total market, the report said.

The expansion of the online market also led to a 29.4 percent on-year increase in exports to nearly $1.61 billion while imports dropped 27 percent to a little over 242 million.

The country's share in the global market also rose 2.7 percentage points from 2009 to 5.8 percent.

By country, 37.1 percent of its exports went to China with 27.1 percent headed to Japan, 15.1 percent to Southeast Asian countries and 9.2 percent to the United States, the ministry said.