South Korean diving instructor Park Soo-hong has been a customer of AliExpress, Chinese tech giant Alibaba’s online shopping service, ever since he went bargain-hunting for car parts five years ago.The 54-year-old regularly compares the platform’s prices with South Korea’s dominant portal Naver and US rival Amazon. An oil level gauge he recently bought for Won86,000 ($64) on AliExpress was advertised for about Won540,000 on local online retail sites.
“Most products on these Chinese platforms are unbelievably cheap,” he said. “Delivery is slow, but I can put up with it if prices are 70-80 per cent cheaper.”
An increasing number of budget-conscious South Koreans are turning to Chinese online marketplaces such as AliExpress and Temu as China’s biggest ecommerce companies aggressively expand abroad amid weaker domestic consumption. The China-founded fast fashion group Shein is also making inroads.