About a quarter of South Korean manufacturers have been negatively affected by Japan's devastating earthquake in March, a poll showed Sunday.
According to the survey of 500 local manufacturers by the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI), 24.8 percent of the respondents suffered losses due to the natural disaster that claimed more than 10,000 lives and disrupted major companies' production.
Hit hardest were machinery and electronics makers, which rely heavily on components imported from Japan, the poll showed.
However, 7.4 percent of those polled said their business performance gathered steam due to the disaster. Oil refiners and steelmakers benefited due to energy shortage and recovery efforts in Japan following the quake, the poll showed.
About 10.6 percent of those polled said they are still struggling to cope with the problems of importing from and exporting to the quake-stricken country, the KCCI said.
Energy companies, makers of bottled waters and recovery-helping firms such as steelmakers are likely to newly emerge as prospective exporters following the disaster, it added.