By Jane Han
Staff Reporter
South Koreans enjoy a rich selection of foreign brands and services from the comfort of their home country, but the diverse offerings are pushing the nation deep into the red in the balance of royalty payments, government data showed Sunday.
The Bank of Korea (BOK) said the amount Asia's fourth-largest economy paid overseas in royalties in the third quarter of this year reached $1.9 billion, up 25.4 percent from the same period a year earlier.
Meanwhile, the amount coming in touched just above $580 million in the same quarter, up 1 percent year-on-year.
The imbalance led to a deficit of $1.32 billion - the largest-ever quarterly shortfall in the trade of royalties since the central bank started compiling related data in 1980.
The amount is a 40.5-percent increase on the July-September period in 2008, indicating that Korea is increasingly paying more for brand and technology usage overseas.
``A countless number of foreign goods and ideas are imported, but we have to keep in mind that none of that is free,'' said a central bank official.
A recent survey done by the Korea Chamber of Commerce & Industry (KCCI), a local business lobby group, showed that nearly 50 percent of all major Korean companies have paid royalties to foreign firms.
Respondents said they spent more than 3 percent of their annual revenue paying their dues abroad.
A breakdown of their payments showed that the highest amount of royalties were paid in the audio, video and telecommunications industry, followed by the petrochemical and textiles industries.
The KCCI poll showed that companies were paying the largest chunk of their royalties to the U.S., followed by Japan and Europe.