Foreign luxury brands have seen their sales in Korea almost triple in recent years but they were stingy in giving back to society, research found Thursday.

The Korea sales of the top 15 foreign high-end brands jumped from 1.42 trillion won ($1.32 billion) in 2005 to 3.87 trillion won last year, said Chaebul.com, an online portal following the activities of larger companies.

Capitalizing on Koreans’ fever for luxury goods, the portal said, their local branches saw net profits more than triple from 66.2 billion won to 236.4 billion won during the same period.

Italian fashion brand Prada recorded drastic growth over the past six years, with its Koreans sales increasing 6.5-fold to reach 175.7 billion won in 2010. Its net profits also sharply increased from 45 million won to 32.3 billion won.

Louis Vuitton, another popular designer label among Koreans, also saw 4.8-fold and 9.7-fold increases in its sales and net profits, respectively, in the same period.

Much of the soaring sales, however, have been sent out of the country to their parent companies abroad, the portal found.

In the period between 2005 and 2010, an average of 47.9 percent of their net profits, or 353.34 billion won, was paid as dividends to their headquarters.

Sisley Korea and Mercedes-Benz Korea have paid more than 85 percent of their net profits as dividends, with the amount worth 37.1 billion won and 64 billion won, respectively.

Prada Korea paid dividends totaling 15 billion won in 2009, an equivalent to 77.2 percent of its net profits in the year.

On the other hand, the portal said the well-off luxury brands surveyed were stingy in contributing to the social good.

Over the past six years, the top 15 companies have made donations amounting to 2.37 billion won, just 0.32 percent of their net profits.

Some companies such as Prada Korea, Swatch Group Korea and Bulgari Korea were found to have made no donations.

By Lee Ji-yoon (jylee@heraldcorp.com)