South Korean pig meat imports recover after COVID

Total imports of pig meat (including offal) in South Korea returned to pre-pandemic levels in Q1 2022 at 152,000 tonnes, a year-on-year increase of 41%.

South Korea is a key Asian market for pig meat, as demand out paces domestic supply with annual consumption of pork at 27kg per capita. Over the last few years, production has been edging up, to 1.4m tonnes in 2021. The USDA expects this output to be repeated in 2022. Demand in South Korea is steady at around 2m tonnes per year (cwe), and so the balance is imported.

The key exporting regions are the EU, US, Canada and South America. Despite Germany being banned from exporting pig meat to South Korea in 2021 due to ASF, the EU still takes the largest market share of imports as Spain has doubled its export quantity to South Korea since 2019, driven by growing domestic production and more recently the easing of the Chinese market. Spain’s increase in exports to South Korea has had a knock-on effect to the US’s market share, which prior to 2022 made up around 40%, but this has now dropped to a 25% market share.

The volumes from the UK make up less than 1% of the South Korean import market; only 610 tonnes were exported in Q1 2022.

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