The number of Japanese vehicles sold here was 2,357 in November, down 56.4 percent from a year earlier, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.
Japanese car sale began to fall since July when Japan tightened control over its export to South Korea of three materials vital to producing memory chips and display panels.
In August, Japan dropped South Korea off its whitelist of trusted trading partners that are given preferential export procedure. In response, Seoul removed Tokyo from its whitelist of export partners.
South Korea believed that Japan's export curbs came in protest of the South Korean top court's rulings that ordered some of Japanese companies to pay reparation to the South Korean victims who were forced into hard labor without pay during the 1910-45 Japanese colonization of the Korean Peninsula.
Japanese brand sale here declined 17.2 percent, before tumbling 56.9 percent in August, 59.8 percent in September and 58.4 percent in October respectively.
Meanwhile, foreign luxury vehicle sale gained 8.9 percent in the month on strong demand for German brands. The sale of cars, made by South Korean automakers, reduced 3.1 percent last month.
The number of cars produced here was 346,377 in November, down 11.3 percent from a year earlier.
Car export contracted 8.6 percent over the year to 217,498 units in November, and auto parts shipment shrank 9.4 percent to 1.77 billion U.S. dollars.
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