SEOUL: The combined sales of South Korea's five carmakers rose 0.68 percent last month from a year earlier mainly on the back of recovering demand and new models, corporate data showed Monday.
The five automakers -- Hyundai Motor Co., Kia Motors Corp., GM Korea Co., Renault Samsung Motors Corp. and SsangYong Motor Co. -- sold a combined 719,003 vehicles in March, slightly up from 714,116 units a year earlier.
Their domestic sales declined 4.4 percent to 139,432 autos last month from 145,903 units a year ago. But overseas sales climbed 2 percent to 579,571 from 568,213 during the same period, the data showed.
The monthly sales gain comes after Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors, in particular, suffered sharp declines in their major Chinese market last year due to a diplomatic row between Seoul and Beijing over the deployment of an advanced US anti-missile system, called THAAD, in South Korea.
In March last year, China took action against the THAAD installation, which subsequently affected public sentiment against South Korean products. Hyundai's sales there plunged 31 percent on-year to 785,006 units last year, while Kia's nosedived 45 percent to 360,006 units.
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