Asia · shipment-level customs data
Shipment-level customs records for South Korea — verified importers and exporters, HS codes, quantities, declared values and ports. Search by product or company and act on what South Korea is actually trading.
| Importer | HS code | Origin | Quantity | Value | YoY |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nordic Coffee AB | 0901.11 | Brazil | 18,000 kg | $52,400 | +14% |
| Bella Roasters SpA | 0901.11 | Colombia | 24,500 kg | $71,900 | +8% |
| Meridian Foods Ltd | 0901.21 | Vietnam | 9,200 kg | $26,100 | +22% |
| Kaffe Handel GmbH | 0901.11 | Ethiopia | 31,750 kg | $94,300 | +11% |
Official figures reported by South Korea to UN Comtrade. These are country-level totals; shipment-level records with named counterparties are available on request.
| # | Supplier | Value | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | China | $139.9B | 22.1% |
| 02 | USA | $72.5B | 11.5% |
| 03 | Japan | $47.6B | 7.5% |
| 04 | Saudi Arabia | $31.4B | 5.0% |
| 05 | Other Asia, nes | $30.2B | 4.8% |
| 06 | Australia | $30.0B | 4.7% |
| 07 | Viet Nam | $28.4B | 4.5% |
| 08 | Germany | $22.3B | 3.5% |
| 09 | United Arab Emirates | $17.9B | 2.8% |
| 10 | Qatar | $14.2B | 2.2% |
| # | Destination | Value | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | China | $132.9B | 19.5% |
| 02 | USA | $128.4B | 18.8% |
| 03 | Viet Nam | $58.3B | 8.5% |
| 04 | China, Hong Kong SAR | $35.0B | 5.1% |
| 05 | Other Asia, nes | $34.0B | 5.0% |
| 06 | Japan | $29.6B | 4.3% |
| 07 | India | $18.7B | 2.7% |
| 08 | Singapore | $18.2B | 2.7% |
| 09 | Australia | $15.6B | 2.3% |
| 10 | Mexico | $13.6B | 2.0% |
| Year | Imports | Exports |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | $731.4B | $683.6B |
| 2023 | $642.5B | $631.8B |
| 2024 | $631.7B | $683.1B |
Source: UN Comtrade, official statistics reported by national authorities. Figures are country-level aggregates, not shipment records.
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Shipment date | When the consignment cleared customs |
| Importer / exporter | Named counterparties on the South Korea declaration |
| HS code | Tariff classification to the national line where published |
| Product description | The description as filed, not a category guess |
| Quantity and unit | Declared volume in the filed unit of measure |
| Declared value | Unit and total value for price benchmarking |
| Trading partner country | Origin for imports, destination for exports |
| Ports and transport mode | Loading and discharge points, sea or air |
How to read it
What the customs data supports, and what it does not, before you build a plan on it.
Import volume for your HS code over multiple years — the direction matters more than any single month.
Which origins and which named exporters already supply South Korea, and how concentrated that supply is.
Declared unit values by origin, so you know what you must compete against before quoting.
When the buying actually happens, so outreach lands in the quarter budgets are set.
Fields with no value on a given South Korea record are not filled in or guessed — a blank means the underlying declaration did not publish that detail.
Product focus
Track semiconductors shipments in and out of South Korea — active traders, volumes, partner markets and declared prices.
Track vehicles shipments in and out of South Korea — active traders, volumes, partner markets and declared prices.
Track ships shipments in and out of South Korea — active traders, volumes, partner markets and declared prices.
Track petrochemicals shipments in and out of South Korea — active traders, volumes, partner markets and declared prices.
Track machinery shipments in and out of South Korea — active traders, volumes, partner markets and declared prices.
Every South Korea importer of your HS code, ranked by volume.
Confirm a South Korea exporter really ships what it claims.
Compare declared unit values into and out of South Korea.
Follow a named company's South Korea shipments over time.
Measure real import demand in South Korea before entering it.
See the ports and lanes that carry South Korea's volume.
Asia carries the largest share of world merchandise trade, and the intra-Asian lanes are among the densest anywhere. That density has two consequences worth holding onto: freight is comparatively cheap and frequent, so lane cost rarely decides a sourcing question on its own; and competition is intense, so the price band inside any given tariff line tends to be tight.
Within that, South Korea’s trade concentrates in semiconductors, vehicles, ships, petrochemicals, machinery. A concentration like that is useful information in itself: it tells you where the country’s industrial capability sits, which chapters its exporters will be credible in, and which chapters it is structurally a net buyer in. An exporter selling into South Korea should expect the strongest competition precisely in the categories the country already makes well, and the clearest opening in the ones it does not.
Most people arrive at trade data with a question phrased too broadly to answer — ‘is there a market here’. The record answers narrower questions extremely well, so the first job is to narrow the question until it becomes one of these:
| The question | How the record answers it |
|---|---|
| Does South Korea import my product at all? | Import value and volume for your tariff line, over several years |
| Is that demand growing or shrinking? | The multi-year trend, with the incomplete recent periods excluded |
| Who already supplies it? | The origin mix, and how concentrated it is between a few countries or many |
| At what price? | Declared unit values from those origins, read as a band rather than an average |
| Who exactly is buying? | Named importers in the shipment records, with their volumes and frequency |
| Through which gateway? | The ports carrying the volume, which fixes transit time and most of the freight |
Assume for a moment that the demand checks out. The next question is whether you can serve it, and that is a sequence of gates rather than a single judgement. Product regulation comes first: if you cannot certify for South Korea, the demand is not addressable and everything downstream is wasted work. Logistics comes second — freight as a share of product value decides whether you are competitive before any commercial conversation happens. Payment and currency come third.
Only then does the buyer list matter. Filter to importers whose declared unit values sit in a band you can supply profitably, whose consignment sizes match what you can produce, and who have been buying consistently rather than occasionally. A shortlist of fifteen South Korea importers built that way is worth more than a thousand-name export of everyone who has ever cleared your tariff line.
The same record read from the export side is a supplier map. Because South Korea’s strength is in semiconductors, that is where you will find the deepest supply base and the most competitive pricing. Look for exporters with unbroken activity across several years and several destination markets — destination spread is a compliance signal as much as a capability one, since shipping regularly into a strictly regulated market implies the paperwork and the product both hold up.
Separate manufacturers from merchant exporters before you negotiate. A manufacturer typically imports inputs under related chapters and exports finished goods with steady volumes; a merchant exports across unrelated chapters with no matching input trail. Both can be good counterparties, but their cost structures and their ability to commit capacity are not the same thing.
South Korea's reported exports to a partner will not equal that partner's reported imports from South Korea. Export values are normally declared free on board and import values include freight and insurance, so the gap is largely definitional. Adjust before you compare, or you will find a discrepancy that is an artefact rather than a finding.
Customs data records goods that crossed a border. It does not record domestic production or domestic consumption, so in categories where South Korea supplies itself, the import record measures the gap local industry does not fill rather than the size of the market. It records no services at all. And it records what was declared, which is a legal statement about classification and value, not a commercial statement about margin or terms.
It also lags. Every authority compiles and publishes on its own cycle, revises published periods as late declarations arrive, and leaves the most recent period incomplete. Treating that incompleteness as a decline is the most common error made with trade data, and it is entirely avoidable by dropping the tail before you read a trend.
It is the shipment-level customs record of goods moving in and out of South Korea — the importer and exporter names, HS code, product description, quantity, declared value and the ports used on each consignment.
Search the HS code or product keyword you sell and filter the market to South Korea. You get every company importing it, ranked by shipment count and declared value, so you can prioritise the buyers worth approaching first.
Filter South Korea export records by your HS code. Each exporter shows a verifiable shipment history — volumes, destinations and consistency — so you can shortlist on evidence rather than a directory listing.
South Korea's trade is concentrated in semiconductors, vehicles, ships, petrochemicals, machinery. The full HS breakdown is available across all 98 chapters.
Most markets are refreshed monthly, following the customs authority's own release cycle. A small number of jurisdictions publish on a 45 to 60 day lag.
Export values are normally declared free on board and import values include freight and insurance, so the same trade is reported at two different values. The gap is largely definitional rather than a reporting failure, and mirror comparisons need adjusting before they mean anything.
No. Customs data exists because goods crossed a border, so in categories where South Korea supplies itself the import record measures the gap local industry does not fill rather than the size of the market. Establish whether imports are the whole market or a slice of it before sizing anything.
Multi-year history is available for the detailed markets, which is what makes trend and seasonality analysis possible. A single period tells you what happened; several periods tell you whether it is growing.
Divide declared value by declared quantity, then control the comparison: same tariff line, same period, same origin, same unit of measure, outliers removed. Read the spread rather than the average, because the spread is what tells you whether there is anything to negotiate.
Settle the classification before searching South Korea — the code drives every filter and every duty figure downstream.
One year is a snapshot. Three shows trend, seasonality and whether an incumbent is losing ground.
Rank counterparties by shipment frequency and consistency, not by size alone.
Reference the actual product, volume band and origin a South Korea counterparty already trades. Generic outreach is ignored.
Send us your HS code and we will return a free sample of South Korea customs data — real counterparties, volumes and declared values.