Encar API: Export Korean Used Car Listings as Clean JSON

What Encar is, and what it is not

Encar is a marketplace: a seller publishes a car with an asking price and buyers contact the seller. It is not an auction, so Encar records in KoreaCarsAPI always carry is_auction=false, an asking price and no auction date. Dealer stock and private sellers appear in the same feed, which makes Encar the widest single view of what is for sale in Korea on a given day.

KoreaCarsAPI is an independent data service. It is not affiliated with Encar and only works with what Encar shows publicly.

Who needs Encar data, and why

Requests for Encar data usually come from a few kinds of teams, each with its own reason to automate the work instead of copying listings by hand.

• Exporters who shortlist cars for clients abroad and need English specs, photos and a price they can convert.
• Importers and resellers in other countries who want a steady feed of Korean stock on their own website.
• Pricing and analytics teams who track asking prices by model, year and mileage over time.
• Developers building search tools, alerts or CRMs on top of Korean listings.

What the API returns for an Encar car

Every record has two parts. The vehicle part holds year, brand, model, generation, trim, engine volume, fuel, transmission, body type, colour and options. The listings part holds the Encar URL, the title, odometer, price with currency, the photo set and the created_at, updated_at and last_seen_at dates. Each listing also keeps a price history, so you can see when a seller lowered the price and by how much.

Reading Encar by hand runs into three problems: Korean option names, cars that vanish and return under a new ID, and prices that only make sense in won. The Encar records solve each of them:

• Performance inspection data, when the seller adds it to the listing, in inspections[] with conclusions, checked items and photos.
• Equipment options translated to English through an options dictionary, so the same feature has one stable name across all cars.
• Re-listed cars linked: Encar re-lists cars under new IDs, and the API connects the old and new IDs so one car keeps one history.
• Prices in KRW plus a stored KRW to USD rate, so you can show an approximate dollar figure without a second lookup.

How to pull Encar listings

For a full copy of the active Encar stock, use GET /cars. It returns a batch of vehicles and a next_url. Follow next_url until there is none left and you have the complete set. Limit the export to Encar with domains[] and ask for English fields with lang=en.

For narrow questions, such as diesel SUVs under a given mileage, GET /search is quicker than a full export, and GET /search/count tells you how many cars match before you fetch them.

# SOURCE_ID is the Encar entry from GET /domains
curl --get https://api.auctionsapi.com/cars \
  -d is_auction=false \
  -d "domains[]=SOURCE_ID" \
  -d lang=en \
  -d api_key=$API_KEY

Practical tips for Encar data

A few habits make an Encar integration much easier to keep correct over months of daily syncs.

• Store the car_id next to the Encar listing ID. When a client sends you an Encar link, GET /listing/{domain_id}/{listing_id} opens that car directly.
• Use last_seen_at to decide when a car has left the market, rather than deleting it the first time it is missing from an export.
• Treat inspection data as optional. It exists only when the seller published it, and a missing report never means a clean history.
• Load GET /car-options once and cache it, instead of translating option names yourself.
• Keep the stored USD rate next to each saved price, so older quotes stay consistent when the rate moves.

Encar alongside the other Korean sources

Encar is the biggest feed, but rarely the only one you need. KB ChaChaCha and K Car come back in the same record format, so one parser covers all three, and together they give a fuller view of asking prices for the same model. When the same VIN shows up on several sites, GET /cars/vin/{vin} brings those listings together.

Dealer auctions such as Lotte Auto Auction sit on the trade side. They are flagged with is_auction=true and return lot data instead of asking prices. Comparing both sides shows you the gap between what dealers see at auction and what retail buyers are asked to pay.

Questions