South Koreans' online direct purchases from overseas countries continued to increase in the third quarter of this year on rising demand for foreign brands and cheaper price tags, government data showed Saturday.

A total of 511.8 billion won ($460 million) of foreign goods was directly bought by South Korean shoppers via Internet malls in the July-September period, up 14.4 percent from a year earlier, according to the data compiled by Statistics Korea.

The quarterly figure has been on a steady rise since 2014 when the statistics agency started to compile such data.

Foreign clothing and fashion items were the most popular goods bought by South Korean customers, with 170.7 billion won worth of purchases made in the three-month period, up 3.9 percent from a year ago.

Foodstuffs worth 141.5 billion won were directly bought, up 31.5 percent on-year, while direct purchases of foreign-made electronic devices and cosmetics rose 24.7 percent and 5.7 percent on-year to 55.5 billion won and 30.4 billion won over the cited period, respectively.

The United States was the biggest seller with 288.9 billion won, followed by Europe with 112.2 billion won and China with 60.2 billion won.

(Yonhap)