South Korea's alcohol imports declined for the first time in a decade last year, amid a boycott of Japanese beer due to a bilateral trade row.

According to the domestic alcohol industry on Monday, liquor imports totaled 466-thousand kiloliters in 2019, down six percent from the previous year.

The on-year decrease was the first since shortly after the global financial crisis in 2009.

While annual liquor imports more than tripled from 114-thousand kiloliters in 2009 to 495-thousand kiloliters in 2018, imports of beer increased by over eightfold from 41-thousand kiloliters to 390-thousand kiloliters.

Last year's decline was attributed mainly to an eight-point-seven percent on-year fall in imports of beer, especially as those from Japan were replaced by Chinese and Belgian imports amid a boycott of Japanese products in South Korea.

The boycott was launched in July last year in protest of Japan's export restrictions of key industrial materials to South Korea, an apparent retaliation against South Korean court rulings on compensating wartime forced labor victims.