What does South Korea import the most?

South Korea's largest import is crude oil, worth $72.6B in 2025, 12% of its total imports of $623B.

Does South Korea run a trade surplus or deficit?

South Korea ran a trade surplus of $114B in 2025: it exported $737B of goods and imported $623B.

Gold is South Korea's fastest-growing top import by value, up 3.3x year over year, reaching $7.5B in 2025.

$623B

2025 · Annual

South Korea yearly trade, 2015-2025

South Korea monthly trade through July 2026

#	Name	Value 2025	Share	YoY
1	Crude oil	$72.6B	11.7%	-11%
2	Integrated circuits	$57.8B	9.3%	+1.4%
3	Petroleum gases	$27.7B	4.4%	-11%
4	Semiconductor manufacturing equipment	$21.3B	3.4%	+15%
5	Petroleum oils	$20.5B	3.3%	-15%
6	Refined industrial goods	$17B	2.6%	+6.2%
7	Processed materials	$14.3B	2.2%	-3.1%
8	Specialty equipment	$11.7B	1.8%	+12%
9	Consumer products	$9B	1.4%	+0.7%
10	Intermediate goods	$6.3B	1.1%	-5.4%

#	Name	Value 2025	Share	YoY
1	Gold	$7.5B	1.2%	+3.3x
2	Precious metal ores	$1.5B	0.2%	+95%
3	Lead ores	$3.2B	0.5%	+69%
4	Data storage media	$2.8B	0.4%	+54%
5	Precious metal waste and scrap	$1.7B	0.3%	+45%
6	Refined industrial goods	$1.4B	0.4%	+6.2%
7	Processed materials	$1.2B	0.4%	-3.1%
8	Specialty equipment	$962M	0.4%	+12%
9	Consumer products	$742M	0.4%	+0.7%
10	Intermediate goods	$523M	0.4%	-5.4%

Source & methodology

We use primary trade sources for every country. See our methodology page for how we source and verify this data.

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