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Korea has maintained a surplus in trade with China for the past 28 years.

However, that trend has recently been shaken.



Reporter Hoon-Kyung Jang analyzed the reason for this month's deficit following May and June of this year.



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This is the new electric vehicle Niro EV that Kia released this year.



For the first time in the Hyundai Motor Group, batteries from the Chinese company CATL were installed.



Ssangyong Motor also plans to install Chinese BYD batteries in Torres-based electric vehicles to be released next year.



This is an example showing the progress of Chinese-made batteries, which we looked down.



Petrochemicals, which have produced huge surpluses, are also slowing down.



Petrochemical products exported to China last month decreased by 7.2% compared to the same period last year, while imports increased by 24%.



There are many evaluations that the trade deficit with China is still due to external factors such as the post-COVID-19 lockdown in China and the Ukraine war.



[Jo Yong-won / Research Fellow for Materials Industry, Korea Institute of Industrial Technology: I think it is because the demand for imports has decreased (due to the Chinese lockdown), and the overall supply in the Asian market is a little excessive.]



However, there is also an analysis that the flow of trade with China is changing. there is.



With China's technological development, exports of intermediate goods to China are decreasing, while imports of finished products are increasing.



So, of the products imported by China last year, Korea's share was 8%, down 1.9 percentage points compared to five years ago.



It was the biggest drop among China's top 10 importers, far worse than the US, which has a trade dispute.



[Kim Arin / Researcher at Korea International Trade Association: If you look at the items that Korea mainly exports to China, there are not many consumer goods (other than cosmetics), such as increasing the proportion of high-end consumer goods.]



If exports to China decrease by 10% It is predicted that our GDP will fall by 0.56 percentage points.



While maintaining the competitiveness of our products in the Chinese market, we have to speed up the development of alternative markets such as Southeast Asia.



(Video coverage: Jeong Seong-hwa, video editing: Lee Seung-yeol)