Seoul: Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com has set up a business entity in South Korea to directly purchase Korean consumer goods for sale in China, the trade ministry said Wednesday. The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources, the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA), and JD.com jointly held a briefing on the company's business model for some 200 Korean consumer goods companies, the ministry said in a press release.

According to Yonhap News Agency, during one-on-one meetings held on the sidelines of the briefing, some Korean companies signed deals worth a combined US$1.5 million to ship their products through JD.com's business-to-consumer (B2C) platform in China. "JD.com plans to increase its direct purchases of Korean consumer goods as local demand for K-beauty and K-food products is expected to grow further on the back of the global popularity of Korean culture," a JD.com official said.

The government will provide full-scale support to Korean companies seeking to enter the Chinese market through major e-commerce platforms such as JD.com, the ministry said. South Korean exports of consumer goods to China reached a record high of $9.3 billion in 2021, but shipments declined to $6.5 billion in 2025 in the years following the COVID-19 pandemic, it said. In the first half of 2026, however, exports of K-consumer goods to China rose 8.7 percent on-year to $3.4 billion.

JD.com, often compared with Amazon in the United States, posted 260 trillion won ($183.5 billion) in sales last year.