BERLIN, Aug. 8 (Xinhua) -- BMW has ordered a recall of 323,700 diesel vehicles in Europe which may be affected by an exhaust gas recycling system defect, the Munich-based carmaker confirmed on Tuesday night.

The move comes shortly after BMW announced a similar recall in South Korea where local government authorities estimated that at least 30 defective diesel motors which were manufactured by the German company have caught fire since 2016. According to BMW, the incidents were caused by leakages in the exhaust gas recycling system which is designed to lower the nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions of diesel vehicles.

Having already recalled 106,000 vehicles built between March 2011 and November 2016 in South Korea, BMW told the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that it would shortly begin to inspect diesel vehicles in Europe for the same potential defect. In Germany alone, 96,300 diesel vehicles will need to be examined at car garages.

A spokesperson for the German luxury carmaker said that the exact costs caused by the recall were still unknown but suggested that replacing the exhaust system module in question came with a price tag in the low hundreds of euros. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung estimated that BMW could face expenses of 160 million euros (185.6 million U.S. dollars) from the European recall.

BMW has highlighted that the recalls were a precautionary measure and that the defect rate for its exhaust gas recycling systems is relatively low at a global average of 0.12 percent. The number of incidents in which fires had actually broken out was hereby lower than the number of defects.