Seoul, August 21 (Yonhap) - South Korea Customs Service (Customs) released a trade statistics show that from January to July this year, South Korea's coffee imports decreased by 3.9%, to 109,752 tons, coffee imports decreased by 9.5%, to 646.73 million US dollars.

If the current downward trend continues until the end of the year, it is expected that the annual coffee import volume of Korea will decrease for the first time in five years since 2018.

Meanwhile, South Korea's coffee imports continued to increase from 158,000 tons in 2018 to 189,000 tons in 2021, and 205,000 tons in 2022, exceeding 200,000 tons for the first time. Coffee imports surged to $1.3 billion last year from $640 million in 2018 to $920 million in 2021. Looking at last year's figures alone, coffee imports increased by 8.2% year on year, and imports increased by 42.4% year on year, the growth rate of the two indicators was the highest record since 2016 and 2011. But coffee imports have shrunk so far this year.

It is analyzed that the volume of coffee imports this year has decreased year-on-year due to the decrease of global coffee production due to abnormal weather and the base effect caused by the increase of coffee imports in Korea last year.

By source of imports, imports from Colombia (-7.9%), Ethiopia (-17.8%) and the United States (-34.2%) decreased year-on-year, but imports from Brazil (16.5%) and Vietnam (22.2%) increased.