Sales of South Korean duty-free shops are reviving, driven by a rebound of Chinese tourists, with major duty-free shops including Lotte, Shilla and Shinsegae experiencing increasing sales, media reports in South Korea said.
Duty-free sales in the first half reached 9.94 trillion won ($8.79 billion), up 38 percent year-on-year, the Joongang Daily reported.
Shinsegae Duty Free's daily average sales reached 1.7 billion won after it opened a branch in southern Seoul on July 18, far exceeding the company's expectations of 1 billion won a day, the report said, noting that Chinese consumers made up about 90 percent of the foreign shoppers at the new branch.
Tourists from the Chinese mainland to South Korea reached 370,222 in May this year, an increase of 46.1 percent year-on-year, although the number of visitors in group tours remained low at 13,840, data from the Korea Tourism Organization showed.
Fu Yue, a South Korean cosmetics daigou who buys products abroad on behalf of domestic consumers, said that most Chinese customers in the duty-free shops are daigou, and many products popular on Chinese social media are out of stock.
"I didn't see many group tourists from China in those duty-free shops," Fu said. Apart from South Korea, Fu also buys products from other Asian countries such as Thailand, which she discovered during the Sino-South Korean dispute over the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system.
"Although my South Korean business is recovering, I want to avoid putting all my eggs in one basket because it's unclear how bilateral relations will proceed," Fu said.
