6월 1∼10일 수출 16.6% 감소…반도체 30.8%↓

South Korea's exports plunged by more than 16 percent on-year in the first ten days of June amid slowing demand for semiconductors.
Kim Hyesung has the details.
South Korea's exports between June 1st and June 10th fell 16-point-six percent on-year to a little over 10 billion U.S. dollars.
Data from the Korea Customs Service on Tuesday shows chip exports, which account for around a fifth of Korea's total exports, plunged nearly 31 percent.
Shipments of home appliances and ships went up, but other major exports, including petrochemical goods and autos all dropped.
Exports to China, South Korea's number one trading partner, shrank 27 percent on-year.
And shipments to the U.S., the EU, Japan and the Middle East also dropped.
Korea's imports fell 11 percent to 12-point-five billion dollars, leading to a trade deficit of two billion dollars.
"Korea's exports fell on slowing global growth. Chip exports, in particular, dropped mainly due to falling chip prices. But as the U.S.-China trade spat escalates and the Trump Administration's ban on Huawei continues to spread, it looks like chip demand is unlikely to pick up as IT companies are cutting or postponing investment."
Already, the average price of DRAM chips, a type of memory chip used in PCs and servers, fell six percent on-month to three-point-seven U.S. dollars in May, about half the price of their historic high recorded last September.
But slowing demand is likely to further drive down prices, with global market research company DRAMeXchange forecasting a price fall of over 10 percent in both the third quarter and the fourth quarter.
South Korea's exports have fallen on-year for six straight months, since last December.
With first 10 days of June showing a double digit fall in exports, it is highly likely that they will fall for a seventh straight month.
Kim Hyesung, Arirang News.