What a Korean used car costs landed in the EU (worked example)
A ₩80,000,000 premium German-brand used car bought in Korea arrives registered in Germany at roughly €69,400 — about ₩110.4 million, about $79,600 — once EU customs duty, German import VAT and the registration fee are paid. Of that increase over the Korean purchase price, €5,301 is duty and €11,079 is import VAT, and those two lines are the part you can calculate before anyone quotes you anything.
The car and the exchange rate
Every conversion below uses the European Central Bank euro reference rates of 18 September 2026: 1 EUR = 1,590.76 KRW and 1 EUR = 1.1460 USD, published by the European Central Bank. That cross-rate puts the dollar at about 1,388 won on the day.
Car price in Korea: ₩80,000,000. At the ECB rate that is €50,290, or about $57,633. This is the amount paid to the Korean seller for the vehicle itself — a used S-Class, 7 Series or Cayenne of the kind listed in the catalogue — and it is the base on which everything downstream is calculated.
Korea-side export costs
Three Korean steps are structural and unavoidable, but none of them has a published national price list, so each one is a quote line rather than a verified figure.
Export deregistration: a Korean car cannot leave while it is still on the domestic register. It is struck off as an export vehicle, and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport records this in its public Car365 database, where the entry reads a line stating the vehicle was deregistered because of export — deregistered because of export. The database confirms the status; it publishes no fee.
Inland transport and export clearance: moving the car from the dealer to Incheon, Pyeongtaek or Masan and lodging the export declaration with Korea Customs are priced per job by the forwarder, so treat the Korean block as one written, dated quote rather than a percentage.
Ocean freight from Korea to Bremerhaven or Hamburg
There is no published tariff for one used car from Korea to a German port. What is published is the container market on the same corridor.
The dated market reference: the Drewry World Container Index assessed on 21 May 2026 put Shanghai to Rotterdam at $2,773 per 40ft container, with the global composite at $2,712. The Freightos Baltic Index flagship figure stood at $3,407.40 on 5 August 2026. That spread is why a rate more than a few weeks old is of no use to you.
The figure used here: $2,773, converted at the ECB rate to €2,420, standing in for one car in one container to a North European port. This is an index reading, not a quote.
EU customs duty on car, freight and insurance
The rate: passenger cars under heading 8703 carry a third-country duty of 10 per cent. The Netherlands Chamber of Commerce states it plainly: "The import duty rate for vehicles is usually 10%, regardless of whether you import new or used cars." TÜV SÜD gives the same figure for Germany — "Zollsatz Pkw: Normalerweise 10 Prozent des Gesamtwertes des Fahrzeugs."
The base: duty falls not on the car price alone but on the customs value: price paid plus transport and insurance up to the point the goods enter the EU. Transport costs are added to the price actually paid "bis zum Ort des Verbringens in das Zollgebiet der Gemeinschaft" — up to the place of entry into the customs territory, per Zoll.
Marine insurance: premiums are set per cargo and per underwriter and no authority publishes a rate, so this is a quote line. The arithmetic uses a placeholder of €300, flagged as unverified. Every extra €100 of insurance adds €10 of duty and about €21 of VAT.
The calculation: €50,290 car + €2,420 freight + €300 insurance = €53,010 customs value. Duty at 10 per cent = €5,301.00.
German import VAT and what it is charged on
The rate: 19 per cent, identical to the domestic VAT rate, confirmed by TÜV SÜD: "Dieser Steuersatz beträgt 19 Prozent."
The base: German customs sets it out under §11(3) of the VAT Act. The starting point is the customs value, to which are added customs duty and other EU import charges, plus transport costs "von der EG-Grenze bis zum ersten Bestimmungsort im Gemeinschaftsgebiet" — from the EU border to the first destination inside the Union, per Zoll. Duty is inside the VAT base, so the tax is charged on the tax.
The calculation: €53,010 + €5,301 duty = €58,311 VAT base, taken here with the port as the first destination. VAT at 19 per cent = €11,079.09. Duty and VAT together come to €16,380.09.
One relief worth checking: returned-goods relief can remove the duty on a car originally built in and exported from the EU, but only where re-import happens "innerhalb von drei Jahren" — within three years — and the goods come back unaltered, per Zoll. A car sold new in Korea years ago will not qualify. Nor does the EU–South Korea agreement, which removes 98.7 per cent of tariffs but only for goods of Korean origin.
Individual approval and inspection
A car that never held EU type approval cannot simply be presented at the counter. DEKRA applies its individual operating permit to vehicles "aus dem Ausland eingeführt wurden und keine EG-Typgenehmigung besitzen", and TÜV SÜD requires a full report for every individually imported non-EU vehicle.
The fee: none of the three bodies publishes one. TÜV Rheinland says only "Die Kosten für die Vollabnahme variieren je nach Umfang und Zeitaufwand" — costs vary with scope and time. Lighting, emissions and electromagnetic compatibility may each need lab work. The line stays open until a station quotes your vehicle identification number.
Registration and plates
The office fee: the city of Cologne lists 30 euro for registering a vehicle in person, 12.80 euro online, 10.20 euro for a reserved custom number, and 15.30 euro more where the vehicle data cannot be pulled from the registers. Fees follow the national road traffic fee schedule, so other cities land in the same range.
The plates themselves: bought from a private sign maker, not the authority. Cologne notes only that "zusätzlich fallen Kosten für die Kennzeichenschilder an", without a figure.
The total
Verified and anchored lines: €50,290 car, €2,420 freight at the 21 May 2026 index, €300 placeholder insurance, €5,301 duty, €11,079.09 import VAT, €30 registration. That sums to €69,420 — about ₩110,430,000, about $79,555. Against the ₩80,000,000 purchase price, the German side alone adds roughly 38 per cent.
Still open: the Korean export block, insurance as actually quoted, the §21 approval, the plates, inland transport from Bremerhaven to your city, and the agent's own service — each a written quote, not a percentage.
What KingStone checks before you pay
Insurance history. The Korean insurance record shows which claims were paid and how much. What matters is the split between panel work and structural repair: a replaced bumper and a straightened member are different cars. The report is read against the physical inspection, not instead of it.
Liens and encumbrances. A Korean vehicle can carry a registered security interest or a running lease. A car in that state cannot be deregistered for export, which means it cannot be shipped. This is checked on the register before money moves.
Import status and mileage. Whether the car was an official Korean-market import or a grey import changes its service record and its documentation. Odometer readings are compared against inspection and service entries, and a reading that does not fit the history is a reason to stop rather than a detail to explain.
Open questions
Several lines could not be verified from a published source and are marked as such throughout. No Korean authority publishes a fee for export deregistration, inland haulage or export clearance, so the whole Korea-side block stands as an agent quote. No carrier publishes a per-car rate from Korea to a German port; the €2,420 above is a 40ft container index reading of 21 May 2026 on the Shanghai–Rotterdam leg, not a quote for your car. TÜV SÜD, TÜV Rheinland and DEKRA all confirm that individual approval is mandatory for a non-EU import while none publishes a price. Marine insurance is a placeholder. The German Federal Motor Transport Authority's pages could not be reached, so registration figures come from a municipal fee list rather than the federal source, and the classification and duty rate should be confirmed in TARIC for your exact vehicle.
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