How Seoul’s measure will affect the Russian secondary car market
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South Korea will tighten control over the export of used cars to Russia. The measure will take effect on February 24. Seoul has added more than 680 items to the blacklist, Yonhap news agency reported. We are talking about goods “having actual or potential military use.” The list also includes used cars with a 2-liter engine.
How critical is this for the Russian market? Editor-in-Chief of Dvizhok magazine Roman Zubko believes that it will be very problematic to buy some popular models: “This is a significant segment of the car market. It was slightly used Korean cars with engines of about two liters that were popular in Russia on both the primary and secondary markets.
These are Hyundai Elantra, Kia Cerato or even cars from the more expensive segment, for example, Hyundai Sonata and Kia K5, Kia Sportage crossovers, Hyundai Tucson. From South Korea, for very reasonable money, it was possible to bring a three-year-old car with low mileage, which was still very, very far from reaching its end.”
As experts interviewed by Kommersant FM note, models from Chinese and Russian companies can become an alternative to South Korean cars. For example, Lada Iskra from AvtoVAZ, which is planned to go into mass production at the beginning of 2025. So, such sanctions from South Korea will not have too much of an impact on Russians, says Alexey Podshchekoldin, president of the Russian Automobile Dealers Association:
“These sanctions no longer have a significant impact on anything. Because today the export of used and new cars from South Korea is quite expensive.
This is also due to the exchange rate of the ruble against both the dollar and the South Korean won, as well as expensive logistics. Chinese partners today make much more offers, including for Korean cars. Because Korean car brands are also sold in the Chinese market. And the flow is extremely small – less than 10 thousand cars.”
As the Autonews portal notes, it is not clear from the Seoul document whether the export ban will affect those cars that Korean companies produce in other countries, for example, in China. But even in this case, there will be workarounds, believes auto journalist Pyotr Bakanov. Another thing is that, in general, parallel import of cars to Russia may soon turn out to be unprofitable, notes Kommersant FM’s interlocutor:
“As in the case of the Japanese market, where Filipinos and Pakistanis operate at the same auctions, circumventing sanctions is not such a big problem. Roughly speaking, your car can be bought locally, in South Korea, by a person from another country altogether, then resold to someone else, and in the end the car, in some unknown way, will end up in Russia.
It’s just that the more intermediaries we have in this chain, the higher the price. In addition, we are threatened that from April 1, parallel imports through the countries of Central Asia, where there was preferential customs clearance, will become unprofitable, and this ban, of course, worsens the situation. But there are also more significant factors that could now hit our market hard.”
In addition to used cars, the list of prohibited South Korean goods includes heavy construction equipment, batteries, aircraft components and machinery. In total, Seoul’s sanctions list already includes more than 1.1 thousand items.
Everything is clear with us – Telegram channel “Kommersant FM”.
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