Then-People Power Party presidential candidate Yoon Suk Yeol examines industrial robots at HD Hyundai Robotics' factory in Daegu in this December 2021 photo. Joint Press Corps

HD Hyundai Robotics and four other Korean industrial robot makers said Monday that they filed anti-dumping complaints last Friday against Chinese and Japanese manufacturers of articulated robots with at least four axes.

They took this action after foreign robotics companies boosted their market share in Korea by offering excessively low prices to automakers and other manufacturing firms.

"As we started suffering damage during the first half of last year, we decided to file anti-dumping complaints against industrial robots imported from China and Japan," an HD Hyundai Robotics official said.

Japan's Fanuc and Germany's Kuka, now under the control of China's Midea, have increasingly focused on the Korean market in recent years, seemingly in response to the slowdown in China's automotive industry.

According to domestic robotics industry officials, some Chinese firms even sold their industrial robots at prices nearly 60 percent lower than those of Korean products.

"Chinese companies appear to be dumping their products into the Korean market to reduce their inventories amid the prolonged weakening of consumption in their own country," the HD Hyundai Robotics official said.

The Korea Trade Commission should decide whether to initiate an anti-dumping probe within two months after the filing.

If the probe begins, it will take three months for the commission to take provisional measures.

The final decision will be made within three months of the preliminary determination.

In 2005, the government imposed anti-dumping tariffs on articulated six-axis robots from Japan's Nachi, Kawasaki, Yaskawa, and Fanuc at the request of Hyundai Heavy Industries, which later spun off its robotics business. This business is now known as HD Hyundai Robotics.