New vehicle registration on the rise

The number of people purchasing new vehicles in Korea rose from a year earlier in the first three quarters, and the number of people writing off their aged cars also increased, the government said yesterday.

As of the end of September, the number of registered vehicles in Korea reached 18.37 million, up 2.4 percent from 17.94 million cars tallied at the end of 2010, according to the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs.

The growth of 430,000 cars, however, represents an 11.4 percent drop from the 490,000 cars added during the same period last year.

“The drop is mainly due to an increase in the number of cars that went out of service in the first three quarters of the year, which surged 20.9 percent from the same period last year to 810,000 cars,” the ministry said in a press release.

It added the increase in the number of cars put out of service represented a rise in the number of potential buyers of new vehicles.

The number of new vehicles registered during the cited period increased 9.2 percent on-year to 1.24 million. The number of newly registered imported vehicles also increased 15 percent to 77,958, putting the total number of foreign-made cars registered here at 596,280.

Out of the total, 25.8 percent, or some 4.75 million cars, were manufactured before 2001 with over 3.4 million vehicles less than two years old, the ministry said.

The number of passenger cars came to 14.06 million, accounting for 76.6 percent of all cars registered, with 3.22 million cargo trucks making up 17.6 percent of the total.

Yonhap