A short paragraph about South Korean licence plates keeps turning up online. It sits in the Wikipedia article on vehicle registration plates of South Korea. It says Korea introduced a neon green plate for cars worth $58,000 or more in January 2024, to stop private use of company-owned luxury cars. Then comes the line everyone quotes: “4 months after the introduction of the new plates, sales of luxury vehicles had already fallen by 27% (sales of Bentley vehicles dropped by 77%).”
I pasted it into Google’s AI Mode and asked how it works. The answer was confident and tidy. It explained the tax loophole and the public shame. Then it added a twist. The plate had turned into a status symbol, and sales had come back.
It sounded like a clean parable about incentives going wrong. Before repeating it, I checked each number against Korean news reports and government data.
The broad story is true. South Korea did put light green licence plates on expensive company cars. Sales did fall hard in 2024, and part of the market did rebound in 2025 as buyers treated the plate as a badge. But the two famous numbers in that sentence come from different periods and measure different things. AI Mode explained them without noticing. Some other details in its answer, such as a 16.5% rebound figure, had no source I could find. The real numbers tell a more interesting story about how public shame works, where it wears off, and what happens when the tax office steps back in.
Most supercars in South Korea were company cars
Before 2024, company cars and private cars in South Korea both carried white licence plates. On the road, nobody could tell whether a car belonged to a person or a business.
The tax rules made buying through a company attractive. A company can deduct a car’s cost, fuel, and insurance as business expenses. The abuse was an open secret. Company owners and their families drove corporate supercars for private use while the business booked the cost. The National Tax Service ran a large audit of this practice in 2020, as The Asia Business Daily later noted.
The numbers from 2021 show how far this went. According to a Korea JoongAng Daily report on 12 April 2022, seven luxury brands sold 2,390 cars in South Korea in 2021. Companies bought 2,026 of them, or 84.8%. All 27 McLarens sold that year were company cars. At Rolls-Royce, 94% of the 189 cars sold went to corporate buyers.
Distinct licence plates for company cars became a campaign pledge of President Yoon Suk Yeol. The idea was simple. Put a bright plate on every expensive company car so everyone on the street knows the company paid for it.
The 2024 rule tied the green plate to the tax deduction
The rule took effect on 1 January 2024. Under the regulation reported by The Korea Times, any company-owned passenger car for business use with an acquisition price of 80 million won or more must carry a light green licence plate instead of a white one. At the time, 80 million won was about $57,800.
The land ministry chose a price line instead of engine size, partly because of expensive electric cars, as The Asia Business Daily reported when the rule was announced in November 2023. The rule also covers leased cars and long-term rentals of over a year. It applies to cars newly registered from 2024, so older company cars kept their white plates. Domestic brands such as Hyundai and Kia are covered as well as imports.
Nothing in the plate rule bans private use. A rule announced by the finance ministry and reported by Tax Times on 27 February 2024 ties the plate to the tax deduction. A company car costing 80 million won or more and registered from 2024 cannot have its costs counted as a business expense unless it carries the light green licence plate. The plate makes the company car visible, and the deduction now depends on it.
The famous 77% and 27% drops come from different periods
The Wikipedia line fuses two real numbers into one wrong sentence. Neither number covers the four months after the rule started. They come from different periods and track different data.
The first number comes from Korea Automobile Importers and Distributors Association (KAIDA) data reported by The Korea Times on 15 April 2024. It compares total brand sales in South Korea in January to March 2024 against January to March 2023. In that first quarter, total Bentley sales fell 77.4%, which gets rounded to 77%. Over the same January to March quarter, Rolls-Royce fell 35.2%, Porsche fell 22.9%, and Lamborghini fell 22.2%. In March 2024, company cars made up 28.4% of imported car registrations. That was the first time the share dropped under 30%. In 2023, company cars had been almost 40% of imported registrations.
The second number comes from the Carisyou Data Research Institute, reported by The Asia Business Daily on 29 August 2024. It measures new company registrations of cars priced over 80 million won from January to July 2024. Those registrations fell to 27,400, down from 37,906 in January to July 2023. That is a drop of 27.7%, which gets cited as 27%. In that same January to July period, company Bentleys fell 65%, from 351 to 123. Corporate registrations of the Mercedes S-Class fell 63.9%, and the Genesis G90 fell 45.6%.
Part of the early drop in 2024 came from timing. Buyers rushed to register cars in late 2023 so they could lock in white plates before the rule started on 1 January 2024.
Even across the full year, the drop held. Full-year 2024 KAIDA figures reported by The Asia Business Daily on 28 January 2025 show that imported cars priced over 100 million won sold 62,520 units in 2024, compared with 78,208 in 2023. That was a fall of 20.1%, and the first annual decline since 2016. Across the full year 2024, Bentley sales fell from 810 to 400.
The 80 million won line pulled prices just under it
Whenever a rule draws a hard price line, people crowd just below it. Because the green licence plate applied at 80 million won, the band between 70 million and 80 million won suddenly mattered.
In January and February 2024, companies registered 1,110 cars in the exempt band of 70 million to 80 million won, up from 1,075 in the same two months a year earlier. Land ministry data obtained by Representative Kim Ju-young and reported by Korea JoongAng Daily on 8 April 2024 showed that 912 of those 1,110 cars had a market value above 80 million won. Two of them were worth over 120 million won. The 912 cars also included 12 convertibles and one camping trailer.
An anonymous source told JoongAng Ilbo that some dealers fabricate receipts and contract terms to help buyers stay under the threshold. The method is known as a “down contract”. The official invoice states a price under 80 million won, and the buyer pays the rest in cash.
The government noticed. By 16 October 2024, a total of 17,936 cars carried the green licence plate. Brand counts stood at 5,327 for Mercedes-Benz, 5,276 for Genesis, 3,665 for BMW, and 1,208 for Porsche. The single most common model wearing a green plate was the domestic Genesis G90, with 3,773 cars. In November 2024, as reported by The Asia Business Daily and Korea JoongAng Daily, the land ministry began checking every company car registered in 2024 by comparing the declared acquisition price against a standard value. The ministry said suspect cases would go to the tax authorities or the police.
In 2025 the green plate flipped into a badge of wealth
After about a year, the social meaning of the plate shifted. A plate that says a company bought this car for at least 80 million won also tells everyone on the road that the driver runs a company rich enough to buy it.
In April 2025, an industry insider quoted by The Asia Business Daily summed up the shift: “the light green license plate is now seen as a symbol of wealth.”
Data from the Carisyou Data Research Institute, reported by SBS Biz on 16 May 2025, showed the rebound in early 2025. From January to April 2025, company cars priced over 100 million won sold 12,221 units, compared with 9,991 in January to April 2024. That was an increase of 22.3%. In that same four-month period, corporate Porsche registrations reached 1,827, up over 30%, while Ferrari reached 115, up 35%. Some company buyers even chose exterior paint colours to match the green licence plate. Analysts quoted by SBS Biz said the plate had turned into a symbol that owners use to show they are wealthy.
Looking at full-year land ministry figures reported by The Asia Business Daily on 25 May 2026 puts both the crash and the rebound in proportion. Here are the annual counts for new company registrations of cars costing 100 million won or more:
| Year | New company registrations (100m won or more) | Change vs previous year | Change vs 2023 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 51,542 | ||
| 2024 | 33,960 | -34% | -34% |
| 2025 | 39,429 | +16% | -23.5% |
The shame worked for a year and cut registrations in this bracket by 34% in 2024. Then the meaning drifted and buyers came back, lifting registrations by 16% in 2025. Even after the rebound, though, 2025 stayed 23.5% below 2023.
In 2026 the tax office used the list the plates created
When public embarrassment faded, the state still had the administrative hook it built in 2024. Every expensive company car claiming a tax deduction now wore a green plate and sat on a clear government register.
On 25 May 2026, National Tax Service commissioner Lim Kwang-hyun posted a warning covered by The Asia Business Daily. He wrote that driving supercars on company money while green plates became a trend “is not simply an ethical issue but a clear act of tax evasion”.
Lim said the agency is analysing the purchase, use, and expense claims of high-value company cars, and will run rigorous tax audits where private use is found. The report’s headline captured his message in plain words: drive supercars with your own money.
What this taught me about signals and AI summaries
A licence plate is a signal, and the audience decides what a signal means. The government meant the green plate to say that this car is paid for by a company. Peers read it as proof that the driver owns a company. In a group where everyone is rich, a visible mark of corporate spending can turn into a badge.
Shame worked for about a year and cut expensive company car registrations by a third. Then the stigma wore off and buyers returned, though not all the way to the 2023 level. Meanwhile, the 80 million won line created a new place to cheat through down contracts just below the threshold.
What lasted is the part of the policy that does not depend on anyone’s feelings. Every expensive company car claiming deductions is now on a list, because the tax deduction requires the green plate. When social pressure stopped working, the tax office used that list to audit buyers.
Finally, a note on method. AI Mode gave me a useful first map of the topic, and every number in it needed checking. The paragraph I gave it merges a 77% first-quarter sales drop for one brand and a 27.7% seven-month drop in company registrations into one sentence about four months. AI Mode explained that sentence and never questioned it. Click through to the underlying counts before you trust a tidy summary, whether a person or a model wrote it.