Beginnings are always hard, and the imported car sector saw no exception. In 1987, the first year of market opening, only Germany's Mercedes-Benz, through its official Korean importer Hansung, was able to sell any imported cars in Korea, and only 10. It took 16 years for imported cars to take up 1 percent of the Korean auto market. But once sales started to gain momentum, the pace picked up quickly. Annual sales topped the 20,000 mark in 2004, and the figure has increased by 10,000 every year since.

It's not only the volume of sales that's rising -- the content of the sales is also changing, from purely luxury vehicles to mass market cars. A look at the sales record of imported cars from January until October reveals that small- and mid-sized cars (engines smaller than 3,000 cc) accounted for around 65 percent of total sales, while full-size cars accounted for no more than 10 percent.

The change is evident in the list of best-selling imports. Japan's popular Honda brand saw its sales more than double from a year ago, threatening to take the top spot on the list. Europe's Peugeot also sold twice as many cars as last year. "As imported cars have gotten popular, more and more people prefer practical and reasonable cars to large and expensive ones," said Volkswagen Korea president Park Dong-hoon.

The growth of the imported car market is due to improvements in the standard of living, changes in social perceptions of imported cars, and aggressive marketing by auto importers. According to the Korea Automobile Importers and Distributors Association, some 70 new models were introduced in Korea last year and this year.

The industry forecasts that the entry of popular Japanese cars with competitive quality and prices could rock the Korean auto market. Honda is already causing a sensation in Korea with its Civic and CR-V models, and Nissan and Mitsubishi are planning to release moderately-priced vehicles. Toyota is also weighing the proper time to enter the Korean market.

(englishnews@chosun.com )