Sales of imported vehicles dropped significantly from a year earlier in 2015, largely due to a sales ban on Audi and Volkswagen cars following an emissions scandal, data showed Thursday.

    In 2016, the number of newly registered foreign cars came to 225,279, down 7.6 percent from 243,900 the previous year, according to the data from the Korea Automobile Importers and Distributors Association (KAIDA). "The imported car market shrank from a year earlier in 2016 due to the Volkswagen scandal that led to the revocation of sales certificates for certain vehicle models," KAIDA official Yoon Dae-sung said in a press release. 

    The tally accounts for 25.01% of all imported vehicles sold in 2016, up from 19.27% the previous year, South Korea's News Agency (Yonhap) reported. BMW took the second spot on the best-selling car brand list here, selling 48,459 units in 2016, up 1.2% from a year earlier. 

    The sharp on-year drop in the number of imported vehicles sold here also marks a slight dip in the overall number of passenger vehicles sold here last year. The country's five automakers earlier said their combined annual sales inched up 0.6% on-year to 1,579,705. 

    The 225,279 imported cars newly registered here last year puts the total number of new passenger vehicles sold here at 1,813,851, down 0.5 percent from the previous year.