Name: Korea Customs Trade API - Export & Import Data
Brand: 193market
SKU: api-193market-korea-customs-trade
Availability: InStock
Author: API Market

## Official South Korean trade statistics, as clean JSON

Korea Customs Trade API turns the Korea Customs Service (관세청) monthly trade release into a
fast, well-documented JSON API. Every export and import figure you get back is the official
published number, down to the 10-digit national tariff line, for 246 partner countries, from
January 2023 to the most recent published month.

South Korea is the world's sixth-largest exporter and the single most useful early read on the
global electronics cycle. Korean memory, logic chips, display panels, lithium-ion cells and
petrochemicals move roughly a month ahead of the headline numbers most analysts watch. Until
now, getting that data meant scraping a Korean-language portal, decoding Windows-949 CSV files,
and reconciling several different code lists by hand. This API removes all of that.

### What is inside

- **Monthly exports and imports** in US dollars and kilograms, from **2023-01** onward.
- **HS codes to 10 digits** — Korea's own tariff lines, for example `8542321010` (DRAM),
  `8507600000` (lithium-ion accumulators), `8703` (passenger cars). You can also roll figures up
  to 2, 4, 6 or 8 digits in a single call.
- **246 partner countries**, each with an ISO alpha-2 code and an English and Korean name.
- **5,982,489 monthly records**, refreshed automatically each month.
- **Plain-language HS search** in English or Korean. The official wording says "accumulators",
  not "battery", and "electronic integrated circuits", not "chip", so the search layer maps the
  everyday words onto the right codes for you.

### Endpoints

| Method | Path | What it returns |
|---|---|---|
| GET | `/v1/trade` | A monthly series plus totals. Filter by `country`, `hs`, `flow`, `from`, `to`. |
| GET | `/v1/top-products` | The largest export or import products for a country and period. |
| GET | `/v1/top-partners` | The largest partner countries for a given HS code. |
| GET | `/v1/hs-codes` | Search HS codes by keyword, or look up a single code. |
| GET | `/v1/countries` | The full partner country list with ISO codes. |
| GET | `/v1/coverage` | First and latest month available, plus record counts. |

### A worked example

`GET /v1/top-partners?hs=8542&flow=export&ym=2026-08` answers "who bought Korean semiconductors
last month, and how much did they spend". `GET /v1/trade?country=VN&hs=8507&flow=export` gives
the monthly battery export series to Vietnam since 2023, which is the series you want if you are
tracking where Korean cell makers are placing capacity. `GET /v1/hs-codes?q=battery` shows the
codes behind those questions, so you never have to guess a tariff line.

### Who this is for

- **Supply-chain and procurement teams** checking where a component actually ships from, at
  tariff-line resolution rather than at a broad category level.
- **Equity and macro analysts** tracking the semiconductor, battery, automotive, shipbuilding
  and petrochemical cycles, where Korean customs data is one of the earliest hard signals.
- **Trade compliance and market-entry consultants** who need defensible, citable figures rather
  than an aggregator's re-estimate.
- **AI agents and research assistants.** Responses are small, flat JSON objects with explicit
  units, so a model can read them without a parsing step.

### Accuracy, and how it is checked

Every month ingested is verified country by country against the totals the Customs portal itself
publishes, and the month is only accepted when the figures agree. The full back-history was
checked the same way: 996 source files, zero mismatches. As an external cross-check, the 2025
export total from this API is $708.9B against the Ministry of Trade preliminary figure of
$709.7B, a difference of 0.1% that comes from the different cut-off dates the two bodies use.

Data is refreshed automatically. The Customs Service publishes a completed month around the
middle of the following month, and the service picks it up within hours of publication, so
`latest_month` moves on its own without any manual re-upload.

### Limits, stated plainly

- **Coverage starts 2023-01.** Earlier years are not included.
- **A published month is final, not live.** Figures for month M appear around the middle of
  month M+1. There is no intra-month or daily series here.
- **40 traded 10-digit codes** — 0.12% of trade value — are absent from the 2026-01 Customs code
  list and therefore carry no name of their own. 34 of them still resolve to a 6-digit parent
  name and 39 to a 4-digit one, and the code itself is always returned.
- **Partners are ISO countries only.** Special customs areas are not broken out separately.

We would rather you knew these four things before you subscribe than discover them afterwards.

### Source and licence

Source: Korea Customs Service (관세청), *Trade statistics by item and country* and *HS code
names*, obtained through the Public Data Portal of Korea (data.go.kr), datasets 15100475,
15049722 and 15130660. The trade statistics carry no usage restriction. The HS code names are
published under the Korea Open Government Licence Type 1, which requires attribution. This API
aggregates the source data and converts it to JSON; every response carries an `attribution`
object naming the source, the licence and the changes made, so attribution travels with the data
into your own product.


## Base URL

```
https://prod.api.market/api/v1/193market/korea-customs-trade
```

## Authentication

Every request needs your API.market key in the `x-api-market-key` header. You can find it in the API Keys section of your dashboard after subscribing. No other credential is required.

```bash
curl 'https://prod.api.market/api/v1/193market/korea-customs-trade/v1/coverage' \
  -H 'x-api-market-key: YOUR_API_KEY'
```

## Endpoint reference

| Method | Path | Parameters |
|---|---|---|
| GET | `/v1/trade` | `country`, `hs`, `start`, `end` |
| GET | `/v1/top-products` | `flow` (default `export`), `country`, `level` (default 4), `start`, `end`, `limit` (default 20) |
| GET | `/v1/top-partners` | `flow` (default `export`), `hs`, `start`, `end`, `limit` (default 20) |
| GET | `/v1/hs-codes` | `q`, `code`, `level`, `limit` (default 20) |
| GET | `/v1/countries` | none |
| GET | `/v1/coverage` | none |

Months are `YYYY-MM`. Country codes are ISO two-letter. HS codes accept 2, 4 or 6 digits.

### Examples

Look up a single HS code against one partner country:

```bash
curl -G 'https://prod.api.market/api/v1/193market/korea-customs-trade/v1/trade' \
  --data-urlencode 'hs=8542' \
  --data-urlencode 'country=US' \
  -H 'x-api-market-key: YOUR_API_KEY'
```

Top export products for the latest month:

```bash
curl -G 'https://prod.api.market/api/v1/193market/korea-customs-trade/v1/top-products' \
  --data-urlencode 'flow=export' \
  --data-urlencode 'limit=10' \
  -H 'x-api-market-key: YOUR_API_KEY'
```

Search the HS catalogue by name:

```bash
curl -G 'https://prod.api.market/api/v1/193market/korea-customs-trade/v1/hs-codes' \
  --data-urlencode 'q=semiconductor' \
  -H 'x-api-market-key: YOUR_API_KEY'
```

Every response carries both English and Korean names (`name_en`, `name_ko`), so you can render either without a second lookup.

## Status Codes

| Code | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 200 | Success, results returned |
| 400 | Invalid or missing parameter |
| 401 | Invalid or missing API key |
| 429 | Rate limit or plan quota reached |
| 5xx | Upstream error, retry the request |

## Contact Us

If you have any questions or need assistance, you can reach out to us through the embedded chat on the bottom right corner of the page or send an email to hello@magicapi.com.


Monthly South Korean trade statistics from Korea Customs: exports and imports in USD and kg by 10-digit HS code and 246 partner countries, from 2023 onward.

Korea Customs Trade API - Export & Import Data

Free