Yen Welcomed at Shopping Centers
By Kim Hyun-cheol
Staff Reporter
Japanese tourists are snapping up everything in sight at department stores, their most preferred shopping items being luxury bags and seaweed.
Their purchasing power comes from the strong yen, which has appreciated by a whopping 65 percent against the Korean won since August last year just before the fall of Lehman Brothers investment bank at the start of the global financial tsunami.
Louis-Vuitton purses, headed by the Neverfull series and Rose speedy bags, posted the highest sales of all items in January and Febuary at Lotte Department Store and Lotte Duty Free Shop. Pricey fashion accessories from the French brand were the most favored at Hyundai Department Store as well.
In the same period, discount stores posted the sharpest sales surge in seaweed. At Lotte Mart's Seoul Station branch, the food item jumped 127 percent in sales from the previous year, followed by liquefied traditional tea products with 112 percent and Korean chili sauce, ``gochujang,'' with 54 percent.
Seaweed, typically popular with Japanese shoppers, remains a popular item even at convenience stores downtown, topping all other products in sales this year at GS 25 outlets in Myeongdong, the hottest spot for Japanese tourists in Seoul.
Traditional alcoholic drinks such as soju and makkoli are also selling unusually well, with sale of the latter jumping 113.7 percent, GS said.
Increases in luxury goods benefited department stores here the most, as they all posted growth up to 6 percent last month.
Sales at Lotte rose 5.7 percent in February and 11.8 percent cumulatively this year. Surging foreign customers were critical in the unexpected showing, it said.
"With the economy remaining in bad shape, this is an unexpected outcome," a Lotte spokesman said. "Huge increase in foreign shoppers focused on luxury goods definitely affected the sales growth the most."
Customers flocking in from Korea's neighboring country occupy local luxury good shops. As prices here are just 30 to 50 percent of what they are on their home turf, Japanese female tourists make shopping sprees as a must on their tour programs. At Hyundai, sales of luxury goods jumped by over 20 percent year-on-year in the last two months.
About 7,900 tourists have been visiting here from Japan on a daily basis since October last year, when the Japanese currency began to gain value in full throttle, according to the Korea Immigration Service.
Last year alone, monthly visitors rose 45 percent between July and December as benefits from the strong yen became substantially increased.